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nin- 








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ON THE 



LESSONS IN PROVERBS. 



ON THE 



LESSONS IN PROYERBS; 



BUNG TSE SUBSTANCB OF 



LE0TUKE3 DELIVERED TO YOUNG MEITS SOCIETIES 
AT PORTSMOUTH AND ELSEWHERE. 



BY 

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, B.D., 

AVTHOB OF "the STUDY OF WORDS,'* ETO. 

nCAM OF XTCHSNSTOKX, HANTS ; XXAMnnNG CHAPLAIN TO THB LOHD BISHOF 

OF OZFOXD ; AND FBOrXSSOE OF DIVINXTF, KXNO'S COIXXOX, LONDON. 




RED FIELD, 

110 AND 112 NASSAU SXBEXT, HXW YORK. 
1853. 



• 



PREFACE. 



It may be as well to state that the lectures which 
are here published were never delivered as a com- 
plete course, but only one here and two there,, as 
matter gradually grew under my hands ; yet so that 
very much the greater part of what is conttoned in 
this volume has been at one time or another actu- 
ally delivered. Although I have always taken a 
lively interest in national proverbs, I had no inten- 
tion at the first of making a book about them ; but 
only selected the subject as one which I thought — 
though I was not confident* bf this — might affoid 
me sufficient mateipl for a single lecture, which I 
had undertaken 'some time ago to deliver. I con- 
fess that I was/ at the time almost entirely ignorant 
of the immense number and variety of books bear- 
ing on the subject. Many of these I still know only 
by name. With some of the best, however, I have 
jKiade myself acquainted ; and by their aid, with the 
addition of such further material as I could myself 



6 FBEFACX. 

farnish, these lectures hare assnmed their present 
shape : and I publish them, because none of the 
works on proverbs which I know are exactly that 
book for all readers which I could have wished to 
see. Either they include matter which can not be 
fitly placed before all — or they address themselves 
to the scholar alone, or if not so, are at any rate 
inaccessible to the mere English reader — or they 
contain bare lists of proverbs, with no endeavor to 
compare, illustrate, and explain them — or if they 
do seek to explain, yet they do it without attempt- 
ing to sound the depths or measure the real sig- 
nificance of that which they undertake to unfold. 
From these or other causes it has come to pass that 
with a liiultitude of books, many of them admirable, 
on a subject so popular, there is no single one which 
is frequent in the hands of men. I will not deny 
that, with all the slightness and short-comings of 
my own, I have still hoped to supply, at least for 
the present, this deficiency. 

IxcBBzrsTOKX^ HAifiB (ENGLAirz))^ December 18, 1852. 



CONTENTS. 



LECrUIiE L 
t Thb Fobm and QtsnBKATiom of Pbovebbs paos 9 

LECTURE IL 
f Thb Pboyxbis of Diffebjent NAnoNs oompabbd 86 

LECTURE m. 
Thx Poxxbt, Wrr, and Wibdoh, of Pboybbbs 62 

LECTURE IV. 
Tbx Mo&alitt of Pbotxbss 86 

LECTURE V. 
Tbe Teboloot of Pbotsbbb •..• 109 

APPENDIX. 
Ths Mxtrigal Latin Pboybbbs of thx llmDis Agbb 185 



ON 



THE LESSONS IN PROVERBS. 



LECTUEE I. 

THE FOBM AND GENERATION OF PROYEBBS. 

It may very easily have happened that from some 
of us proverbs have never attracted the notice which 
I am persuaded they deserve ; and therefore that, 
when summoned to bestow even a brief attention 
on them, we are in some doubt whether they will 
repay our pains. We think of them but as sayings 
on the lips of the multitude; not a few of them 
have been familiar to us as far back as we can re- 
member; often employed by ourselves, or in our 
hearing, on slight and trivial occasions : and thus 
from these and other causes it may very well be, 
that, however sometimes one may perhaps have 
taken our fancy, we shall yet have remained blind 
in the main to the wit, wisdom, and imagination, 
of which they are full ; and very little conscious of 
the amusement, instruction, insight, which they are 
capable of yielding. Unless too we have devoted 



10. irOBM AND GENERATION 07 FS0VXSB8. 

a certain attention to the subject, we may not be at 
all aware bow little those more familiar ones, which 
are frequent on the lips of men, exhaust the treasure 
of our native proverbs; how many and what ex- 
cellent ones remain behind, having now for the most 
partfallen out of sight ; or what riches in like kind 
other nations possess. We may little guess how 
many aspects of interest there are inwl^ch our own 
by themselves, or our own compared with those of 
other people, may be regarded. 

And yet there is much to induce us to reconsider 
our judgment, should we be thus tempted to slight 
them, and to count them not merdy trite, but trivial, 
and unworthy of a serious attention. The fact that 
they please the people, and have pleased them for. 
ages — that they possess so vigorous a principle of 
life, as to have maintained their ground, ever new 
and ever young, through all the centuries of a 
nation's existence — nay, that many of them have 
pleased not one nation only, but many, so that they 
have made themselves a home in the most different 
lands — and further, that they have, not a few of 
them, come down to us from remotest antiquity, 
borne safely upon the waters of that great stream 
of time, which has shallowed so much beneath its 
waves — all this, I think, may well make us pause, 
should we be tempted to turn away from them with 
anything of indifference or disdain. 

Ajid then further, there is this to be considered^ 



ABISTOTLE COLLECTED PBOYSRBS. 11 

that some of the greatest poets, the profoundest 
philosophers, the most learned scholars, the most 
genial writers in every kind, have delighted in them, 
have made large and frequent use of them, have 
bestowed infinite labor on the gathering and eluci- 
dating" of them. In a fastidious age, indeed, and 
one of false refinement, they may go nearly or quite 
out of use among the so-called upper classes. " No 
gentleman," says Lord Chesterfield, or " No man of 
fashion," as I think is his exact word, " ever uses a 
proverb."* And with how fine a touch of nature 
Shakespeare makes Coriolanus, the man who, with 
all his greatness, is entirely devoid of all sympathy 
; for the people, to utter his scorn of them in scorn 
of their proverbs, and of their frequent employment 
of liiese: — 

"Hang 'em! 
They said they were an hungry, sighed forth proyerbs ; 
That^ hunger broke stone-walls ; that dog^must eat; 
T^at^ meat was made for mouths ; thai^ the gods sent not 
Com for rich men only — with these shreds 
They yented their complainings." 

Coriolanus^ Act L Scene 1. 

But that they have been always dear to the true 
intellectual aristocracy of a nation, there is abun- 
dant evidence to prove. Take but these three names 
in evidence^ which though few, are in themselves 
a host. 'Aristotle made a collection of proverbs; 

* A similar contempt of them speaks out in ihe antithesis of the ' 
French Jesuit^ Bonhours: "Les proverbes sont les sentences da 
peuple^ et les sentences sont les proyerfoes des honndtes gens." 



12 FOSBi Aim a£X£RATION OF PBOVKSBS. 

nor did he count that he was herein doing anght 
nnworthy of his great reputation, however some of 
his adversaries may have made this a charge against 
him. He is said to have been the first who did so, 
though many afterward followed in the same path. 
Shakespeare loves them so well, that besides often 
citing them, and innumerable covert allusions, rapid 
side-glances at them, which we are in danger of 
missing unless at home in the proverbs of England. 
Several of his plays, as Measure far Measv/re^ 
AWa well that ends welly have popular proverbs 
for their titles. And Cervantes, a name only in- 
ferior to Shakespeare, has not left us in doubt in 
respect of the affection with which he regarded 
them. Every reader of Don Quixote will remem- 
ber his squire, who sometimes can not open his 
mouth but there drop from it almost as many prov- 
erbs as words. I might name others who held the 
proverb in honor — men, who though they may not 
attain to these first three, are yet deservedly ac- 
counted great ; as Plautus, the most genial of Latin 
poets, Babelais and Montaigne, the two most origi- 
nal of French authors ; and how often Fuller, whom 
Coleridge has styled the wittiest of writers, justifies 
this praise in his witty employment of some old 
proverb : nor can any thoroughly understand and 
enjoy Hudibras^ no one but will miss a multitude 
of its keenest allusions, who is not thoroughly 
familiar with the proverbial literature of England. 



PBOVEKBS IN SOBIFTUBB. 13 

Nor is this all ; we may with reverence adduce 
quite another name than any of these, the Lord him- 
self, as condescending to quote such proverbs as he 
found current among his people. Thus, on the oc- 
casion of his first open appearance in the synagogue 
of Nazareth, he refers to the proverb, PhysiciaUy 
KeaL thyself (Luke iv. 23), as one which his hearers 
will perhaps bring forward against himself; and 
again presently to another, A prophet is not withr 
out honor hut in his own coimtry^ as attested in hia 
own history ; and at the well of Sychar he observes, 
"Herein is that saying," or that proverb, "true, 
One soweth cmd another reapethP (John iv. 37.) 
But he is much more than a quoter of other men's 
proverbs : he is a maker of his own. As all forms 
of human composition find their archetypes and 
their highest realization in Scripture, as there is no 
tragedy like Job, no pastoral like Kuth, no lyric 
melodies like the Psalms, so we should affirm no 
proverbs like those of Solomon, were ^not that a 
greater than Solomon has drawn out of the rich 
treasure-house of the Eternal Wisdom, a series of 
proverbs more costly still : for indeed how much of 
our Lord's teaching, especially as recorded in the 
first three Evangelists, is thrown into this form ; and 
how many of his words have in this shape passed 
over as " faithful sayings" upon the lips of men ; and 
so doing, have fulfilled a necessary condition of the 
proverb, whereof we shall have presently to speak. 



14 FOBM AND GEHSBATION OF PBOYSBBS. 

But not urging this testimony any fartller — a 
testimony too august to be lightly used or employ- 
ed merely to swell the testimonies of men, least of 
all, men of such " uncircumcised lips" as, with all 
their genius, were more than ouq of those whom I 
have named — and appealing only to the latter, I 
feel, in affirming that whether we listen to those 
single voices which make silence for themselves, 
and are heard through the centuries and their ages, 
or to that great universal voice of humanity, which 
is wiser even than these, for it is these, with all else 
which is worthy to be heard added to them, there is 
here a subject, which those whose judgments should 
go very far with us, have not accounted unworthy 
of their serious regard. 

And I am sure if we bestow on them ourselves 
even a moderate share of p,ttention, we shall be 
ready to set our own seal to the judgment of wiser 
men that have preceded us here. For, indeed, what 
a body of popular good sense and good feeling, as 
we shall then perceive, is contained in the better, 
which is also the more numerous portion of them ; 
what a sense of natural equity, what a spirit of 
kindness, breathes out in many of them ; what pru- . 
dent rules for the management of life, what shrewd 
wisdom, which though not of tliis world, is most 
truly ybr it, what frugality, what patience, what per-, 
severance, what manly independence, are continue 
ally inculcated by them. What a fine knowledge 



DEFCnnON OF A FBOYEEB* 16 

of the hnman heart do many of them display ; what 
useful and not always obvious hints do they offer 
on many most important points, as on the choice of 
companions, the bringing up of children, the bear- 
ing of prosperity and adversity, the restraint of all 
immoderate expectations. And they take a yet 
higher range than this ; they have their ethics, their 
theology, their views of man in his highest relations 
of all, as man with his fellow-man, and man with 
his Maker. Be these always correct or no, and I 
should be far from affirming that they always are, 
the student of humanity, he who because he is. a 
, man counts nothing human to be alien to him, can 
never neglect or pass them by. 

But what, it may be asked, before we proceed 
-farther, is a proverb? Nothing is harder than a 
definition. While on the pne hand there is no 
easier task than to find a fault or flaw in the defini- 
tions of those who have gone before us, nothing on 
the other is more difficult than to propose one of our. 
own, which shall not also present a vulnerable side. 
Some one has said that these three things go to the 
making of a proverb, shortness, sense, and salt. In 
brief pointed sayings of this kind, the second of the 
qualities enunierated here, namely sense, is some- 
times sacrificed to alliteration. I would not affirm 
that it is so here : for the words are well spoken, 
though they do not satisfy the rigorous requirements 
of a definition, as will be seen when we consider 



16 FOSM AKD GENERATION OF PBOYEBBS. 

what the writer intended by his three essesj which 
it is not hard to understand. The proverb, he would 
say, must have shortness; it must be succinct, utter- 
able in a breath ; it must have sensejUot being, that 
is, the mere small talk of conversation, slight and 
trivial, else it would perish as soon as bom, no one 
taking the trouble to keep it alive ; it must have 
salty that is, besides its good sense, it must in its 
manner and outward form be pointed and pungent, 
having a sting in it, a barb which shall not suiBTer it 
to drop lightly from the memory.* Yet, regarded 
as^ definition, this of the triple s fails, as I have 
said ; it indeed errs, both in defect and excess. 

It errs in defect, for it has plainly omitted one 
quality of the proverb, and the most essential of all 
— I mean popularity, acceptance, and adoption on 
the part of the people. Without this popularity, 
without these suffrages, and this consent of the 
many, no saying, however brief, however wise, how- 
ever seasoned with salt, however worthy on all 
these accounts to have become a proverb, however 
fulfilling all other its conditions, can yet be esteem- 
ed as such. 

* Compare with this Martial's so happy epigram upon epigrams^ 
in which everything runs exactly parallel to that which has been 
said above : — ' ^ 

**Omne epigtiamma sit instar apis ; sit acnlena illJ, 
Sint sua mella, sit et corporis exigui;" 

which may be indifferently rendered thus : — 

Three things must epigrams, like bees, have all— 
A stingy and honey, and a body small 



PEOVEEBS WILL BB COKCKB. 17 

Ab respects also ijhortiiess, it is quite certain that 
a good proverb, will be short, as short, that is, as is 
compatible with the full and forcible conveying of 
that which it intends. Brevity, " the soul of wit,^ 
will be eminently the soul of a proverb's wit. But 
still shortness is only a relative term, and it would, 
perhaps, be more accurate to say that a proverb 
must be eonciscy cut down, that is, to the fewest 
possible words ; condensed, quintessential wisdom.* 
But that, if only it fulfil this condition of being as 
short as possible, it need not be absolutely very 
short, as there are sufficient examples to prove. 
Thus Freytag has admitted the following, which 
indeed hovers on the confines of the fable, into his 
great collection of Arabic proverbs : They said to 
the camel-iird (i. e., the ostrich), " Carry ;'•' it an- 
aweredy ^ I can notj for I am a hird^ They said 
^^JF'ly;^^ it answered, ^I cam, not, for I am a cameV 
This could not be shorter, yet, as compared with the 
greater number of proverbs, is not short.f Still for 
the most part they will be brief, not a few consist- 

* This 18 what Aristotle means^ when he ascribes vwroftta — which 
in another place-he opposes to the Sy'^os Xe^eajs — ^to it 

f Let serve for farther proof this eminentlj witty old Oerman 
proyerb^. which, despite its apparent length, has not forfeited its 
character as such. I shall prefer to leaye it in th« original : Man 
spricht^ an yiererlei Leuten ist Mangel auf Erden : an Pfaffen, sonat 
diirfte einer nit 6 bis 7 Pfmenden ; an Adelichen, sonst woUte nit 
jeder Bauer ein Junker 9ein ; an Huren, sonst wurden die Handwerk 
Eheweiber und Nunnen nit treiben; an Juden, sonat wurden Christen 
nit wuQh«ra. 



18 rOBH AKD GENERATION OF PBOVEBBfl. 

ing of two, three, and four, and these oftentimes 
monosyllabic words. Thus, Extremes meet; Far^ 
warned^ forearmed; Bight wronga no man; Harm 
watchy harm catch ; and a thousand more.* 

Popularity, which I observed in passing, was left 
out in that enumeration of the essential notes of the 
proverb, is yet the most essential of all ; if indeed 
it be not the only one whose presence is absolutely 
necessary, whose absence is fatal to the claims of 
any saying to be regarded as such. Those, how- 
ever, who have occupied themselves with the making 
of collections of proverbs, liave sometimes failed to 
realize this to themselves with suflScient clearness, 
or at any rate have not kept it always before them ; 
and thus it has come to pass, that many collections 
include whatever brief sayings their gatherers have 
anywhere met with,f which to them have appeared 

* The very fihortest proverb which I know in the world is this 
German: Voll, toll; which sets out very well the connection be- 
tween fullness and folly, pride and abbndance of bread. In that 
seeking of extreme brevity noted above, they sometimes become ex.- 
ceedingly elliptical (although this is the case more with the ancient 
than with the modern), so much so as to omit even the vital element 
of the sentence, the verb. Thus: Sua Minervam; Furea clamorem; 
Metetrix pudieam ; Amantes amentes. 

f When Erasmus, after discussing and rejecting the definitions of 
those who had gone before him, himself defines the proverb as^ 
" Celebre dictum, scit& qu&piam novitate insigne," it appears to me 
that he has not escaped the fault which he has blamed in others — 
that^ namely, of confounding the accidental adjuncts of a good prov- 
erb, with the necessary conditions of every proverb. In rigor the 
whole second clause of the definition should be dismissed, and Celebre 
dittwn remain alone. 



APEOSSSMS NOT FBOVESBS. 19 

keenly, or wisely, or wittily spoken ; while yet a 
multitude of these have never received their adop- 
tion into the great family of proverbs, or their rights 
of citizenship therein : inasmuch as they have never 
passed into general recognition and currency, have 
no claim to this title, however just a claim they 
may have on other grounds to our admiration and 
honor. For instance, this word of Goethe's, "A 
man need not be an architect to live in a house," 
seems to me to have everj^ essential of a proverb, 
saving only that it has not passed over upon the lips 
of men. It is a saying of manifold application ; a 
universal law is knit up in a particular example, 
that gracious law in the distribution of blessing, 
which does not limit our use and enjoyment of 
things by our understanding of them, but continu- 
ally makes the enjoyment much wider than the 
knowledge ; so that it is not required that one be 
a botanist to have pleasure in a rose, nor a critic to 
delight in Paradise Lost^ nor a theologian to taste 
all the blessings of Christian faith, nor, as he ex- 
presses it, an architect to live in a house. Here is 
another of his inimitable sayings: "Heaven and 
earth fight in vain against a dunce ;" yet it is not a 
proverb, because his alone, although abundantly 
worthy to have become such,* moving as it does in 

♦ It suggests, however, the admirable Spanish proverb, spoken no 
doubt out of the same conviction : Bio% me di eorUiendOf eon quien 
m« entien^ 



20 FOBM AND aSNVRAnON Of FBOTEBBS. 

the same line with, though £ar superior to, the Chi« 
nese proverb, which itself is also good: One. has 
never so much need of one^s wity us when one hoe 
to do with a fool. 

Or to. take another example still more to the 
point. James Howell, ah English writer of the 
seventeenth century, one certainly meriting better 
than that almost entire oblivion into which his 
writings have fallen, occupied himself much with 
proverbs, and besides eDllecting those of others, has 
himself set down " five hundred new sayings, which 
in tract of time may serve for proverbs to posterity." 
As was to be expected, they have not so done ; for 
it is not after this artificial method that such are 
bom ; yet many of these proverbs ia expectation, 
are expressed with sense and felicity, for example : 
" Pride is a flower that grows in the devil's garden ;" 
as* again, the selfishness which characterizes too 
many, is not ill reproduced in the following : " Bum 
not thy fingers to snuff another man's candle ;" and 
there is at any rate good theology in the following : 
"Faith is a great lady, and good works are her 
attendants." Yet it would be inaccurate to quote 
these as proverbs (and their author himself, as we 
have seen, did not do more than. propose them as 
proverbs upon trial), inasmuch as they have remain-? 
ed the private property of him who first devised 
them, not having passed into general circulation ; 
which imtil men's sayings have done, maxims, sen- 



NOT ALL PBOVBBBd TBtTS. 1^.''' 

beWRd 



tenees, apothegmS) aphoriBms they may beTWd 
these of excellent temper and proof, but proverbs ' 
as yet they are not. 

It is because of this, the popularity inherent in a 
proverb, that a genuine one is that from which, in a 
certain sense, there is no appeal, Tou will not sup- 
pose I mean that there is no appeal from its wisdom, 
truth, or justice; but no appeal from it as most 
truly representing a popular conviction. Aristotle, 
who, in his ethical and polit^al writings, often findd 
much, more, always finds this in it. It may not be, 
it veiy often "will not be, a universal conviction 
which it expresses, but ever one popular and wide- 
spread. So far from a universal, very often over 
against the one proverb there will be another, its 
direct antagonist ; and the one shall belong to the 
kingdom of light, the other to the kingdom of dark- 
ness. Common fame is seldom to hlame. Here is 
the baser proverb, for as many as drink in with 
greedy ears all reports to the injury of their neigh-- 
bors, and are determined that they shall be true. 
But it is not left without its compensation : " They 
say so^^^ is half a liar; the better word with which 
they may arm themselves, who count it a first duty 
to close their ears against all such unauthenticated 
rumors to the discredit of their bretliren. The 
nohlest vengeance is to forgive ; here is the godlike 
proverb on the manner in which wrongs should be 
recompensed : JSe who oa/n not revenge himself is 



23 .TOBM AND aXNSBAtlOK OV PBOTEEBS. 

weah^ Jie who will not is vile^* here is the devilish. 
From what has been here said, it will be seen that 
an old English poet's praise of proverbs, 

*'The people's voice the voice of God we call; 
And what are proverbs but the people's voiee t 
Coined firsts and current made by public choice? 
Then sure thej must have weight and truth withal**— 

that this, tme in the main, will require to be taken 
with certain qualifications and exceptions. 

Herein, in great part, the force of a proverb lies, 
namely, that it has already received the stamp of 
popular allowance. A man might produce (for 
what another has done he might do again), some- 
thing as witty, as forcible, as much to the point, of 
his own, which should be hammered at the instant 
on his own anvil. Yet still it is not the wisdom of 
many ; it has not stood the test of experience ; it 
wants that which the other abeady has, but whic^i 
it only after a long period could acquire — the con- 
senting voice of many and at different times to its 
wisdom and truth. A man employing s^ long-rec- 
ognised proverb is not speaking of his own, but 
uttering a faith and conviction very far wider than 
that of himself or of any single man ; and it is be- 
cause he is so doing that proverbs, in Lord Bacon's 
words, " serve not only for ornament and delight, 
but also for active and civil use ; as being the edge- 
tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots 
of business and affairs." 
* Chi non pud fare cna vendetta d debile^ chi non vuole h yiIqi 



FOFXTLABTIT ^EBSEKTUL. 23 

The proverb has in fact the same advantage over 
the word now produced for the first time, which, for 
present currency and value,-ha8 the recognised coin 
of the realm over the rude unstamped ore newly 
dug up from the mine. This last may possess an 
equal amount of fineness ; but the other has been 
stamped long ago, has already passed often from 
man to man, and found free acceptance with all '^ 
it inspires, therefore, a confidence which the ruder 
metal can not at present challenge. And the same 
satisfaction which the educated man finds in refer- 
ring the particular matter before him to the universal 
law which rules it, a plainer man finds in the appeal 
to a proverb. He takes refuge, that is, as each man 
so gladly does, from his mere self and single fallible 
judgment, in a larger experience and wider con- 
viction. The explanation of the word "proverb" I 
believe to lie here. .One who uses it, uses it pro 
verba ; he employs for and instead of his own in- 
dividual word, this more general word, which is 
every man's. 

And in all this which has^ been urged lies, as it 
seems to me, the explanation of a sentence of an 
ancient grammarian, which at first sight appears to 
contain a bald absurdity, namely, that a proverb is 
" a saying without an author." For, however with- 

* Thufl^ in a provefb about proverbs, the Italians say, with a true 
insight into this its prerogative : n proverbio i^invecchic^ e chi vuol 
far bene, vi ed specchia. 



24 FOBM AKB OXNXBAHOK of FBOY^BBd. 

out a known author it may, and in the majority of 
cases it must be, still, as we do not believe in the 
spontaneous generation of proverbs any more than 
of anything else, author every one of them "must 
have had. It might, however, it often will have 
been, that in its utterance the author did but con- 
solidate the floating convictions of the society round 
him ; he did but clothe in happier form what others 
had already felt, or even already uttered ; for often 
a proverb has been in this aspect, "the wit of one, 
and the wisdom of many." And further, its consti- 
tutive element, as we must all now perceive, ib not 
the utterance on the part of the one, but the accept- 
ance on the part of the many. It is their sanction 
which first makes it to be such ; so that every one 
who took or gave it during the period when it was . 
struggling into recognition, may claim to have had 
a share in its production. Front the very first the 
people vindicate it for their own. 

Let us now consider if there be any other which 
some have sometimes proposed as essential notes of. ♦ 
the proverb, which yet are in fact accidents, such as 
may be present or absent without affecting it vitally. 
Into an error of this kind they have fallen, who 
have claimed for the proverb, and made it one of 
its Necessary conditions, that it should be a figura- 
tive expression. A moment's consideration will be 
BuJKcient to prove this. How many proverbs, such 
as JETaste makes waste^ Soneeiy is the 'best jpoliey^ 



MANY PROVERBS FIGURATiyB. 25 

and ten thousand more, have nothing figurative 
about them. The error has arisen from taking that, 
which belongs certainly to very many proverbs, and 
those oftentimes the best and choicest, and trans* 
fferring it, as a necessary condition, to all. This 
much of truth they who asserted it certainly had ; 
namely, that the employment of the concrete in- 
stead of the abstract, is one of the most frequent 
means by which it obtains and keeps its popularity ; 
for thus the proverb makes its appeal to the whole 
man — not to the intellectual faculties alone, but to 
the feelings, to the fancy, or even to the imagina- 
tion, as well, stirring the whole man to a pleasure- 
able activity. 

By the help of an instance or two, we can best 
realise to ourselves how great an advantage it thus 
obtains for itself. Suppose, for example, one were 
to content oneself with saying, "Poverty will be 
his lot who waits to be rich by other men's deaths," 
would this trite morality be likely to go half so far, 
or to be remembered half so long, as the vigorous 
comparison of this proverb : He who waits for 
dead merCa shoes may go ha/refootf Or again, what 
were " All men are mortal," as compared with the 
proverb. Every door may he shut hut deatlCs door f 
Or let one observe : " More perish by intemperance 
than are drowned in the sea," is this anything better 
than a painful, yet at, the same time, a flat truism? 
But let it be put in this shape : More a/re drowned 



26 FOESC Am> OENEBATIOK OF FBOTEBBS. 

in the toine-cup than in the ocean;* or again in 
this : More are drowiied in beer and in wine than 
in water (and these both are German proverbs), and 
the assertion assumes qnite a different character. 
There is something tliat lays hold on ns now. We 
are struck with the smallness of the cup as set 
against the vastness of the ocean, while yet so many 
more deaths are ascribed to that than to this ; and 
further with the fact that, literally, none are, and 
none could be, drowned in the former, while multi- 
tudes perish in the latter. In the justifying of the 
paradox, in the extricating of the real truth from 
the apparent falsehood of the statement, in the 
answer to the appeal made here to the imagination 
— an appeal and challenge whicJi, unless it be re- 
sponded to, the proverb must remain unintelligible 
to us — in all this there is a process of mental ac- 
tivity, oftentimes so rapidly exercised as scarcely to 
be perceptible, yet not the less carried on with a 
pleasurable excitement. 

Let me mention now a few other of the more fre- 
quent helps which the proverb employs for obtain- 
ing currency among men, for being listened to with 
pleasure by them, for not slipping again from their 
memories who have once heard it, yet helps which 
are evidently so separable from it, that none can be 
in danger of affirming them essential parts or con- 
ditions of it. Of these, rhyme is the most promi- 
* Im Beoh«r •nauf«n mehr als in M«ere. 



ALLITERATION IN PROVERBS. 27 

nent. It would lead me altogether from my imme- 
diate argument, were I to enter into a disquisition 
on the causes of the charm which rhyme has for us 
all ; but that it does possess a wondrous charm, that 
we like what is like, is attested by a thousand facts, 
and not the least by the circumstance that into this 
rhyming foim a very great multitude of proverbs, 
and those among the most widely current, have been 
thrown. I need hardly remind you of such as these : 
JVbpainSj no gains / Little strokes fell greai, oaks ; 
A king^s face should give grace / East, west, home 
is hest / Who goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing / 
with many more, uniting, as you will observe most 
of them do, this of rhyme with that which I have 
spoken of before, namely, extreme brevity and con- 
ciseness.* 

Alliteration, which is nearly allied to rhyme, is 
another of the helps whereof the proverb largely 
avails itself. Alliteration was at one time an im- 
portant element in our early English versification ; 

* So, too, in other languages: Qai prend, se rend ; Wie gewonnen, 
BO zerronnen ; and the Latin medieval : Qnalis Tita, finis ita. We 
sometimes think of rhyme as a modem invention, and to the modern 
world no doubt belongs the discovery of all its capabilities, and the 
consequent large application of it Bat proverbs alone would be 
sufficient to Bhow that in itself it is not modern, however restrict- 
ed in old times the employment of it may have been. For instance, 
there is a Greek proverb to express that men learn by their suffer- 
ings more than by any other teaching: IIa9^^ara, itaefjftara (Herod,^ i 
207); one which, in the Latin, Nocumenta, documents, finds both in 
rhyme and sense its equivalent ; to which evidently the inducement 
lay in the chiming and rhyming words. 



28 FOBH Am) omncsATioK of pbotebbs. 

it almost promised to contend with rhyme itself, 
which should be the most important ; and perhaps, 
if some great master in the art had arisen, might 
have retained a far greater hold on English poetrj 
than it now possesses. At present it is merely sec- 
ondary and subsidiary. Yet it can not be called 
altogether unimportant ; no master of melody de- 
spises it ; on the contrary, the greatest, as in our 
days Tennyson, make the most frequent, though not 
always the most obvious, use of it. In the proverb 
you will find it of continual recurrence, and where 
it falls, as to be worth anything it must, on the key- 
words of the sentence, of very high value. Tlius : 
JPVost and fraud hoth end in fouL ; Out of debt^ 
out of damper ; Do in hiU as you would do in 
TiaU ; that is, Be in solitude the same that you 
would be in a crowd. I will not detain you with 
further examples of this in other languages ; but 
such occur in all ; I will only adduce, in concluding 
this branch of the subject, a single Italian proverb, 
which in a remarkable manner unites all three 
qualities of which we have been last treating, 
brevity, rhyme, and alliteration : Traduttori^ tradir 
tori / one which we might perhaps reconstitute in 
English thus : Translators^ traitors y so untrue, for 
the most part, are they to the genius of their 
original, to its spirit, if not to its letter, and fre- 
quently to both ; so do they surrender^ rather 
than render^ its meaning; not turning^ but only 



tbansplakhkg of pboyxbbs. 29 

overturning^ it from one language to another.* 
A certain pleasant exaggeration, the nse of the 
figure hyperbole, is a not unfrequent engine with 
the proverb to procure attention, and to make a 
way for itself into the minds of men. Thus the 
Persians say : A needless eye is wide enough for 
two friends : the whole world is too narrow for 
two foes ; and the Arabs, of a man whose good 
luck seems never to forsake him, so that from the 
very things which would be another man's ruin, he 
extricates himself not merely without harm, but 
with profit and with credit. Of such a one they 
say : Idling him into, the Nile^ and he will come up 
with a fish in his mouth. We have here examples 
of hyperbole in the proverb, a figure of natural 
rhetoric which Scripture itself does not disdain 
occasionally to employ. 

In all this which I have just traced out, in the 
fact that the proverbs of a language are so fre- 
quently its highest bloom and flower, while yet so 
much of tlieir beauty consists often in curious feli- 
cities in diction, pertaining exclusively to some 
single language, either in a rapid conciseness to 
which nothing tantamount exists elsewhere, or in 
rhymes which it is hard to reproduce, or in allitera- 
tions which do not easily find their equivalents, or 

♦ This is St Jepome's pun, who complains that' the Latin yersiona 
of the Greek Testament current in the church in his daj, were too 
xnany of them not ver9wne9f but everHonet, 



80 FOBM AJSfJ) QXNERATIOir OF PB0TSBB8. 

or in other verbal happinesses snch as these, lies the 
difficulty which is often felt, which I shall often feel 
in the course of these lectures, of transferring them 
without serious loss, nay, sometimes the impossi- 
bility of so doing, from one language to another. 
Oftentimes, to use an image of Erasmus,* they are 
like those wines which can only be drunk in perfec- 
tion by those who drink them in the land which 
gave them birth. Transport them under other skies, 
or still worse, empty them from vessel to vessel, and 
their strengtli and flavor will in great part have dis- 
appeared in the process. 

Still, this is rather the case where we seek delib- 
erately, and only in a literary interest, to translate 
some proverb which we admire from its native lan- 
guage, into our own or some other. Where, on the 
contrary, it has transferred itself, made for itself a 
second home, and rooted itself a second time in the 
mind of a people, there one is continually surprised 
at the instinctive skill with which it has found com- 
pensations for that which it has been compelled to 
let go ; has replaced one vigorous idiom by another, 
one ha|5py rhyme or play on words by its equiva- 
lent; and this too even in cases where the extremely 
narrow limits in which it must confine itself, allow 

* Habent enim hoc peculiare pleraque proverbin, ut in c& lingni 
Bonnre postulant in qu& nata sunt; quod si in alieniim sermonem 
demigrarint^ multum gratiee decedat Queraadmodum sunt et yina 
quffidam que recusant exportari, nee germanam saporis gratiam ob- 
tineanti nisi in his locis in quibus proyeniunt 



THB GEITXBATION OF PBOVSBBS. 81 

it the very smallest liberty of selection. And thus, 
presenting itself equally finished and complete in 
two, or even more languages, the internal evidence 
will be quite insufficient to determine which of its 
forms we shall regard as the original, and which as 
a copy. For example, the proverb at once German 
and French, which I can present in no comelier 
English dress than this, 

Mother'a truth 
Keeps conttarU ycuth ; 

but which in German runs thus, 
and in French, 



Mutter-trtu 

Wird taglich neu ; 



Tendresse matemelle 
Toujour^ te renouvelle ; 

appears to me as exquisitely graceful and tender in 
the one language as in the other ; while yet so much 
of its beauty depends on its form, that beforehand 
one could hardly have expected its charm to have 
survived after its transfer to the second language, 
whichever that may be, wherein it foimd a home. 

There is one subject to which I must briefly in- 
vite your attention, before I bring this lecture to its 
close. The subject of the generation of proverbs 
is, indeed, one upon which whole volumes have 
been written. Those who have occupied tliemselves 
herein, have sought to trace historically the circum- 
stances out of which various proverbs have sprung, 



32 FOBM ASCD OBNSSATION 07 FBOTKSBS. 

and to which they owe their existence ; that bo bj 
the analogy of these we might realise to ourselves 
the rise of others whose origins lie out of our reach, 
obscure and unknown. Doubtless it is interesting 
to preside thus at the birth of a saying which has 
lived on and held its ground in the world, and has 
not ceased, from the day it was first uttered, to be 
more or less of a spiritual or intellectual force among 
men. Still the cases where this is possible are ex- 
ceedingly rare, as compared with the far greater 
number where the first birth is veiled, as is almost 
all birth, in mystery ; and even in respect of those 
few exceptions to this law, it must remain often 
a question, whether a story has not been sub- 
sequently imagined for the proverb, rather than 
that the proverb has indeed spi-ung out of the 
history. 

Occasionally, indeed, we move here on sufficiently 
sure ground ; sometimes on that which is perfectly 
secure ; as when we have in Scripture (and this 
happens more than once) the record of the first 
upcoming of a proverb. Tlius we are told at large, 
1 Sam. X. 10-12, how the question, " Is Saul 
also ammvg the prophets V^ becaine a proverb in 
Israel. 

Let me bring forward another, from a different 
quarter, which may very well have arisen on the 
occasion, and under the circumstances, to which its 
birth is commonly ascribed. When the officers of 



POPULAETTT OF FBOYEEBS. 83 

Alexander reported to him, with something of dis- 
may, the innumerable multitudes of the Persian 
hosts whicli were advancing to assail him, the youth- 
ful Macedonian hero silenced them and their appre- 
hensions with the reply : One butcher does not fear 
many sheep / not in this applying an old proverb, 
but framing a new, and one admirably expressive 
of the confidence which he felt in the immeasurable 
superiority of the Hellenic over the barbarian man ; 
and this word, having been once set on foot by him, 
has since lived on, and that, because the occasions 
were so numerous on which a word like this would 
find its application. 

And taking occasion from this royal proverb, let 
me just observe by tlie way, that it would be a 
great mistake to assume, though the error is by no 
means an uncommon one, that because proverbs are 
popular, they have therefore originally spnmg from 
the bosom of the populace. What was urged just 
now of their popularity was not. at all intended in 
this sense ; and the sound common sense, the wit, 
the wisdom, the right feeling, which are their pre- 
dominant characteristics, alike contradict any such 
supposition. They spring rather from the sound 
healthy kernel of the nation, whether in high place 
or in low ; and it is surely worthy of note, how large 
a proportion of those with the generation of wliich 
we are acquainted, owe their existence to the fore- 
most men of their time, to its philosophers, its 

2* 



84 FOESC AND GENESATIOK OV FBOVEBBS. 

princes, and its kings ; as it would not be diflBicnlt 
to show. 

I will only offer to trace before you the genera- 
tion of a single proverb more. It is one well known 
to the Greek scholar — The cranes of Ihycua* — 
and a proverb to the birth of which a story so re- 
markable, and of so deep a moral interest, is attach- 
ed, that I shall not hesitate to repeat it, even at the 
risk that Schiller's immortal poem on the subject, 
or it may be the classical studies of some here, may 
have made it already familiar to a portion of my 
hearers. Ibycus, a famous lyrical poet of Greece, 
journeying to Corinth, was assailed by robbers : as 
he fell beneath their murderous strokes he looked 
round, if any witnesses or avengers were nigh. No 
living thing was in sight but a flight of cranes soar- 
ing high over head. He called on them, and to 
them committed the avenging of his blood. A vain 
commission, as it might have appeared, and as no 
doubt it did to the murderers appear. Yet it was 
not so. For these, sitting a little time after in the 
open theatre at Corinth, beheld this flight of cranes 
hovering above them, and one said scoffingly to an- 
other, "Lo, there, the avengers of Ibycus!" The 
words were caught up by some near them; for 
already the poet's disappearance had awakened 
anxiety and alarm. Being questioned, they be- 
trayed themselves, and w^ere led to their doom; 

*AI Ifivxov yipavot. 



THE CRANES OF IBTCUS. 85 

and The cranes of Ibycus passed into a proverb, 
very much as our Murder will out^ to express the 
wondrous loadings of God, whereby the secretest 
thing of blood is continually brought to the light 
Let thus much on the generation of proverbs 
suffice. 



86 FB0TSBB8 OF NATIOBB OOVPAjaD. 



LECTURE IL 

THE FBOTIEBBS OF DIFFEBENT NATIONS OOIIPABED. 

^' The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are dis- 
covered in its proverbs," — this is Lord Bacon's well- 
worn remark ; although indeed only well-worn be- 
cause of its truth. " In thein," it has been further 
said, ^^is to be found an inexhaustible source of 
precious documents in regard of the interior history, 
the manners, the opinions, the beliefs, the customs 
of the people among whom they have had their 
course." Let us put these assertions to the proof, 
and see how far in this people's, or in that people's 
proverbs, its innermost heart speaks out to ns ; how 
far the comparison of the proverbs of one nation 
with those of others may be made instructive to us ; 
what it will tell us severally about each. Tliis only 
I will ask, ere we enter upon the subject, that if I 
should fail here in drawing out anything strongly 
characteristic, if the proverbs regarded from this 
point of view should not seem to reveal to you any 
of the true secrets of national life, you will not, 
therefore, misdoubt those assertions with which my 
lecture opened; or assume that these documents 



OBEEK FBOYESBS. 87 

would not yield up their secret, if questioned aright ; 
but only believe that the test has been unskilfully 
applied : or, if you will, that my brief limits have 
not allowed me to make clear that which, with 
larger space, I might not have wholly failed in 
doing. 

I am very well aware that in following upon this 
track, one is ever liable to deceive oneself, to im- 
pose upon others, picking out and adducing such 
proverbs as conform to a preconceived theory, pas- 
sing over those which would militate against it. 
Quite allowing that there is such a danger which 
needs to be guarded against, and also that there are 
a multitude of these sayings which can not be made 
to illustrate difference, for they rest on the broad 
foundation of the universal humanity, underlying 
and deeper than that which is peculiar and national, 
I am yet persuaded that enough remain, and such 
as may, with perfect good faith, be adduced, to con- 
firm these assertions ; that we may learn from thq 
proverbs current among a people, what is nearest 
and dearest to their hearts, the aspects under which 
they contemplate life, how honor and dishonor are 
distributed among them, what is of good, what of 
evil report in their eyes, with very much more 
which it can never be unprofitable to know. 

That which strikes one most in the study of the 
Greek proverbs, and which the more tliey are 
studied, the more fills one with wonder, is the evi- 



88 PEOVEKBS OF NATIONS COMPARED. 

dence they yield of a leavening throngh and tlirongh 
' of the entire nation with the most intimate knowl- 
edge of its own mythology, history, and poetry. 
The infinite multitude of slight and fine allusions to 
the legends of their gods and heroes, to the earlier 
incidents of their own history, to the Homeric nar- 
rative, the delicate side glances at these which thio 
Greek proverbs constantly embody, assume an ac- 
quaintance, indeed a familiarity, with all this on 
their part among whom they passed current, which 
almost exceeds belief. In many and most important 
respects, the Greek proverbs, considered as a whole, 
are inferior to those of many nations of the modem 
world. This is nothing wonderful; Christianity 
would have done little for the world, would have 
proved very ineffectual for the elevating and deepen- 
ing of man's life, if it had been otherwise ; but, as 
bearing testimony to the high intellectual training 
of the people who employed them, to a culture not 
restricted to certain classes, but which must have 
been diffused through the whole nation, no other 
collection can bear the remotest comparison with 
this. 

It is altogether different with the Roman prov- 
erbs. These, the genuine Roman, I mean, the 
growth of their own soil, are very far fewer in 
number than the Greek, as was indeed to be ex- 
pected from the far less subtle, and less fertile 
genius of the people : hardly any of them are legen- 



ITALIAN PEOVEKBS ON PARMINO* 89 

dary or mythological ; whicli again agrees with the 
fact that the Italian pantheon was very scantily fur- 
nished as compared with the Greek ; very few have 
much poetry about them, or any very rare delicacy 
or refinement of feeling.* Yet they are not with- 
out merits of their owii. A vigorous moral sense 
speaks out in many ; and even when this is not so 
prominent, they wear often a thoroughly old Koman 
aspect ; they are business-like and practical, frugal 
and severe, such as might have been often, even as 
no doubt they were, on the lips of the elder Cato ;f 
and in the number that relate to farming, they bear 
singular witness to that strong and lively interest in 
agricultural pursuits, which was so remarkable a 
feature in the old Italian life.:]: 

* Thb h&8 something more than most that I know, of the grace 
and tenderness generally so wanting to them : Mores amici noveris, 
nonoderis; and finds its graceful equivalent in the Italian: Ama 
Tamico tuo con ii difetto suo. Zell, in his flight but elegafit little 
treatise on The proverbs of the ancient Romans {Ferietischriflen, vol. 
ii., pp. 1-96), observes with truth, how much deeper and tenderer are 
the ancient classical proverbs having to do with friendship, than those 
which regard love ; and that this was only to be expected, seeing 
how much higher an ideal of that existed than of this, the full realiza- 
tion of which was left for the modern Christian world. The proverb 
before us, which Horace unfolds at large, and with such exquisite 
delicacy of feeling {Sat, I, 8, 24-93), might be cited in proof. 

f It is, indeed, he who has preserved for us that very sensible, and 
very characteristic one : What is not needed, is dear at a farthing. 
(Quod non opus est, asse carum est.) 

J These are two or three of the most notable — the first, against 
** high farming,** which it is strange if it has not been appealed to in 
the modern controversy on the subject : Nihil minus expedit quam 
agrom optima colere. (Plin. K 2^,t 6, 18.) Over against thiB» how* 



40 PBOTEBBS OF NATIONS OOUPABXD. 

It will not be possible to pass under even this 
hastiest review more than two or three of the modem 
families of proverbs. And first, the proverbs of 
Spain. I instance these, because the Spanish litera- 
ture, poor in many provinces wherein others are 
rich, is probably richer in this province than any 
other literature in the world; certainly than any 
other in the western world ; and this, I should be 
inclined to believe, both as respects quantity and 
quality.* For quantity, the mere number of Span- 
ish proverbs is astonishing. A collection I have 
been using while preparing these lectures, contains 
between seven and eight thousand, and yet does not 
contain all; for I have searched it in vain for several 
with which from other sources I had become ac- 
quainted. Nay, it must be very far indeed from 
exhausting the entire stock, seeing that there exists 
a manuscript collection brought together by a dis- 
tinguished Spanish scholar, in which the proverbs 
have attained to the almost incredible amount of 
from five and twenty to thirty thousand f 

ever, we must set another, warning against the attempt to farm with 
insufficient capital : Oportet agrum imbecilliorem esse quam agrico- 
lam ; and yet another, on the liberal answer which the land will 
make to the pains and cost bestowed ^m it: Qui arat olivetum, rogat 
fructum ; qui stereorat^ exorat ; qui csediti oogit 

* Tliis was the judgment of Salraasius, who says : " Inter Europseos 
Hispani in his ezcellunt^ Itali yix cedunt^ Galli proximo sequuntur 
iutervallo. 

f What may have become of this collection I know not ; but it 
waa formerly in Riehard Heber's library (see the Catalogue, voL iz., 



GHABAOTEB OF SPAiaSH PBOYEBBB. 41 

And in respect of their quality, it needs ovAj to 
call to mind some of those, so rich in humor, so 
double-shotted with sense, wherewith the squire in 

No. 1697). Juan Yriarte was the collector, and in a note to the cata- 
logue, it is stated that he devoted himself with such eagerness to the 
bringing of it to the highest possible state of completeness, that it 
was his custom to giye his servants a fee for anj new proverb which 
fhey brought him ; while to each, as it was inserted in his list^ he 
was careful to attach a memorandum of the quarter from which it 
came ; and, if this was not from books but from life, an indication 
of the name, the rank, and condition in life of the person from whom 
it was derived. 

I will take occasion here to observe how little likely it is that in 
any country the collections which exist in print embrace all the prov- 
erbs in actual circulation. They preserve, indeed, many others; all 
those which, having now become obsolete, would, but for them, have 
been forgotten ; but there are not a few, as I imagine, which live on 
the lips of men, yetjiave never found their way into books, however 
worthy to have done so, either because the sphere in which they cir- 
culate has continued always a narrow one, or that the occasions 
which call them out are very rare, or that they, having only lately 
risen up, have not hitherto attracted the attention of any who cared 
to record them. It would be well, if such as take an interest in the 
subject^ and are sufficiently well versed in the proverbial literature 
of tlieir own country, to recognise such unregistered proverbs when 
they meet them, would secure them from that perishing, which, so 
long as they remain merely oral, might easily overtake them ; and 
would make them, at the same time, what all good proverbs ought 
certainly to be, the common heritage of all. The pages of the ex- 
cellent I^otes and Queries would no doubt be open to receive any 
such, and in them they might be safely garnered up. That there are 
such proverbs to reward him who should carefully watch for them, 
is abundantly proved by the immense addition mentioned above, 
which Yriarte was able to moke to the proverbs, so numerous already, 
of Spain. Nor do there want other indications of the like kind. 
Thus, the editor of very far the best modern collection of German 
proverbs^ records this one, which is found, as he affirms^ in no pre- 
ceding collection, and which he himself never heard but once, and 
then from the lips of an aged lay servitor of a monastery in«the 



42 V^EbOTEKBA OF NATIONS OOMPABED. 

Don Quixote adorns liis disconrse ; being oftentimes 
indeed not the fringe and border, but the main woof 
and texture of it : and then, if we assume that the 
remainder are not altogether unlike these, we shall, 
I think, feel that it would be hard to appreciate 
them more highly than they deserve. And some 
are in a higher vein ; for taking, as we have a right 
to do, Cervantes himself as the truest exponent of 
the Spanish character, we should be prepared to 
trace in the proverbs of Spain a grave thoughtful- 
ness, a stately humor, to find them breathing the 
very spirit of chivalry and honor, and indeed of 
freedom, too ; for in Spain, as through so much of 
Europe, it is despotism and not freedom which is 
new. 

Nor are we disappointed in these our expectations. 
How eminently chivalresque, for instance, the fol- 
lowing: White hands can not hurt.* What a 

Black Forest : Offend one monk, and the lappets of all cowls mil 
fiutter as far as Home (Beleidigestu einen Miinch, so knappen alle 
Kuttenzipfel bis nach Rono); and yet who can doubt that we have a 
genuine proverb here, and one excellently expressive of the common 
cause which the whole of the monastic orders, despite their inner 
dissensions^ made ever, when assailed from without^ with one another ? 
It is very easy to be deceived in such a matter, and one must be con- 
tent often to be so; but the following, which is current in Ireland, I 
have never seen in print: The man on the dike always hurls well, 
the looker-on at a game of hurling, seated indolently on the wall, 
always imagines that he could improve on the strokes of the actual 
players^ and, if you will listen to him, would have played the game 
much better than they ; a proverb of sufficiently wide application. 
* Las manos blancaa no ofenden. 



JUDGMENT OF ITALIAN PROVERBS. 4:3 

grave humor belongs to tliis: The ass knows in 
whose face he hrays.* Wliat a stately and superb 
manner of looking calamity in the face, speaks out 
in the advice which this one contains : When thou 
seest thy house in fiames^ approach and wajrm thy- 
self hy it.\ "What a spirit of freedom, which would 
not be encroached on even by the highest, is em- 
bodied in another: Thelcing goes as far as he may^ 
not as far as he would,'];. 

"We may too, I think, remark how a nation will 
occasionally in its proverbs indulge in a fine irony 
upon itself, and show that it is perfectly aware of 
its own weaknesses, follies, and faults. This the 
Spaniards must be allowed to do in tlieir proverb, 
Succors of Spain^l by which they designate any 
help which is largely and confidently promised, but 
which, in the hour of need, invariably fails to arrive. 
Certainly any one who reads the despatches of Eng- 
land's great captain during the peninsular war, will 
find in almost every page of them that which abun- 
dantly justifies this proverb — will own that those 
who make it read themselves aright, and could not 
have designated broken pledges, unfulfilled promises 
of aid, by a happier title than Succors of Spain. 

The Italians also are emine'ntly rich in proverbs ; 
and yet if ever I have been tempted to retract or 

* Bien sabe el asno en ciija cara rebozna. 

f Quando yierds tu casa quemar, llega te k escalentar. 

X Va el rej do puede, no do quiere. 

I Socorros de Espafia. 



44 ntOTKRBS OF KATI0N8 OOMPABKD. 

seriously to modify what I shall have occasion by- 
and-by to ajQirm in regard of a nobler life and 
spirit as predominating in proverbs, it has been 
after the study of some Italian collection. "The 
Italian proverbs," it has been said, not witliout too 
much reason, though perhaps also with overmuch 
severity, " have taken a tinge from their deep and 
politic genius, and their wisdom seems wholly con- 
centrated in their personal interests. I think every 
tenth proverb in an Italian collection, is some cyni- 
cal or some selfish maxim, a book of the world for 
worldlings."* Certainly many of them are shrewd 
enough, and only too shrewd; inculcating a uni- 
versal suspicion, teaching to look every where for a 
foe, glorifying artifice and cunning as the true 
guides and only safe leaders through the perplexed 
labyrinth of life,f and altogether seeming dictated 
as by the very spirit of Machiavel himself. 

And worse than this is the glorification of revenge 
which speaks out in too many of them. I know 
nothing of its kind to give one a more shuddering 
sense of horror than the series which might be drawn 
together of Italian proverbs on this matter ; espe- 
cially when we take them with the commentary 
which Italian history supplies, and which shows 
them no empty words, but the deepest utterances 

♦ CurioHlies of Literature, p. 391. London : 1888. 

f These may serve as examples: Chi ha sospetto, di rado d in 
difetto. Fidarsi S bene, ma non fidarsi d meglio. Da chi mi fido mi 
guardi Iddio^ da chi non mi fido, mi guarderd io. 



of the nation's heart. There is no misgiving in these 
about the right of entertaining so deadly a guest in 
the bosom ; on the contrary, one of them, exalting 
the sweetness of revenge, declares. Revenge is a 
morsel for God.* There is nothing in them (it 
would be far better if there were) of blind and 
headlong passion, but rather a spirit of deliberate 
calculation, which makes the blood run cold. Thus 
one gives this advice : Wait time and place to a/st 
thy revenge^ for it is never well done in a hurry ;\ 
while another proclaims an immortality of hatred, 
which no spaces of intervening time shall have 
availed to weaken : Revenge of a hundred years 
old hath still its sucking teeth,"];, "We may well be 
thankful that we have in England, at least as far as 
I am aware, no sentiments parallel to these, em- 
bodied as the permanent convictions of the national 
mind. 

How curious again is the confession which speaks 
out in another Italian proverb, that the maintenance 
of the Romish system, and the study of the Holy 
Scripture, can not go together. It is this; With 
the gospel one becomes a heretic. I No doubt with 
the study of the Word of God one does become a 

* Vendetta, boccon di Dia 

f ABpetta tempo e loco a far tna vendetta, che la non ri fa mai ben 
in fretta. Compare another: Vnoi far vendetta del tno nemieo^ 
governati bene ed ^ heir e fatta. 

{ Vendetta di cent'anni ha ancor i lattaiuoll 

I Con Tevan^elo si diventa eretica 



46 PBOTSSBS OF NATIONS OOMFABED. 

a heretic, in the Italian sense of the word; and 
therefore it is only prudently done to put all ob- 
stacles in the way of that study, to assign three 
years' and four years' imprisonment, with hard 
labor, to as many as shall dare to peruse it ; yet 
certainly it is not a little remarkable that such a 
confession should have embodied itself in the popu- 
lar utterances of the nation^ 

But while it must be freely owned that the charges 
brought just now against the Italian proverbs, are 
sufficiently borne out by only too many, they are 
not all to be included in the common shame. Very 
many there are, not merely of a delicate refinement 
of beauty,* of a subtle wisdom, which has not de- 
generated into cunning and deceit, but not a few 
also of a nobler stamp; honor and honesty, plain 
dealing and uprightness, have here their praises too, 
and are not seldom pronounced to be in the end 
more than a match for the subtlest cunning and de- 
ceit. How excellent in this sense is the following : 
For an honeat many half Ki% wits is enough^ the 
whole is too little for a knave ;\ the ways, that is, 
of truth and uprightness, are so simple and plain, 
that a little wit is abundantly sufficient for those that 
walk in them ; the ways of falsehood and fraud are 

* As thia^ to express the freedom in regard of thine and min^ 
which will exist between trne friends : Friends tie their purees with 
a spidn's thread. (Git aniici legono la borsa con un filo di ragnatelo.) 

f Ad un uomo dabbeae syanza la metii del cervello; ad un tristo 
non baata ne anche tutto. 



THE MODERN EGTFTIANS. ' 4T 

BO perplexed and tangled, that sooner or later, all 
the wit of the cleverest rogue will not prevent him 
from being entangled therein. How often and 
how wonderfully has this found its confirmation in 
the lives of evil men ; so true it is, to employ an- 
other proverb, and a very deep one, from the same 
quarter, that The devil is subtle^ hut weaves a coarse 
weh.* 

Again, what description of Egypt as it now is, or 
indeed generally of the East, could set us at thd 
heart of its moral condition, could make us to un- 
derstand all which long centuries of oppression and 
misrule have made of it and of its j)eople, what 
could do this so effectually as the collection of 
Arabic proverbs now current in Egypt, which the 
traveller Burckhardt gathered, and which, after his 
death, were published with his name ?t In other 
books, others describe the modern inhabitants of 
Egypt, but here they unconsciously describe them- 
selves. The selfishness, the utter extinction of all 
public spirit, the servility which no longer, as with 
an inward shame, creeps into men's acts, but utters 
itself boldly as the avowed law of their lives, the 
sense of the oppression of the strong, of the inse- 
curity of the weak, and, generally, the whole char- 

* Jeremy Taylor appears to have found mnch delight in the prov- 
erbs of Italy. In the brief foot-notes which he has appended to the 
Holy Living alone, I connted.five and twenty such, to which he makes 
more or less remote allusion in. the text. 

f Arabic Proverb* of the Modem Egyptiane, London : 1880. 



48 PBOVISfiBS OF KATI0N8 OOMPABED. 

acter of life, alike the outward and inward, as poor, 
mean, sordid, and ignoble, with only, a few faintest 
glimpses of that romance which one usually attaches 
to the East ; all this, as we study these documents, 
rises up before us in truest, though in painfuUest 
outline. 

Where but in a land which evermore was changing 
its rulers, and in which oftentimes the unworthiest 
sat in highest places of all, whom yet to propitiate 
was the only safety, where else could the law of 
baseness have been proclaimed aloud, and this have 
been laid down as the maxinr^of conduct. If the 
monkey reigns^ dance hefore him f The monkey, it 
is true, may reign in other lands besides those of 
the East ; but the examples in a neighboring land, 
not merely of statesmen and warriors, of men such 
as Ouizot and Changamier, but of many more in 
every class, erect amid a too general prostration, 
abundantly testify that reign as the monkey ipay, 
simia in purpuri, all will not therefore count it their 
part and their wisdom to dance before him. What 
indeed this dancing is worth, another of those 
Eastern adages reveals, which says : Kiss the ha/nd 
which thou canst not hite. Again, in no land save 
in one where rulers, being evil themselves, feel all 
goodness to be their instinctive foe, and themselves 
therefore entertain an instinctive hostility to it, 
where they punish but never reward, where not to 
be noticed by them is the highest aim of those 



MANY PEOVEBBS LOCAL. 49 

tinder their yoke, in no other land could a proverb 
like the following, Do no good^ and thou shaltjind 
no evil^ have ever come to the birth. How settled 
a conviction that wrong, and not right, was the lord 
paramount of the world, must have grown up in 
men's spirits, before such a word as this (I know of 
no sadder one), could have found utterance from 
their lips. 

And other families of prov^bs would each of 
them tell its own tale, give up its own secret ; but 
I must not seek from this point of view to question 
them further. 1 would rather bring now to your 
notice that even where they do not spring, as they 
can not all, from the centre of a people's heart, nor 
declare to us the secretest things which are there, 
but dwell more on the surface of things, in this case 
also they have often local or national features, which, 
to study and trace out, may prove both curious and 
instructive. Of how many, for example, we may 
note the manner in which they clothe themselves in 
an outward form and shape, borrowed from, or 
suggested by the peculiar scenery or circumstances 
or history of their own land; so that they could 
scarcely have come into existence, not at least in the 
shape which they now wear, anywhere besides. 
Thus our own. Make hay while the sun shines^ is 
truly English, and could have had its birth only 
under such variable skies as ours — not certainly in 
those southern lands where, during the summer 

3 



50 PBOVISB8 OF NATIOSrS CX)HPAKED. 

time at least, the sun always shines. In th« same 
way, there is a fine Cornish proverb in regard of 
obstinate wrongheads, who will take no counsel ex- 
cept from calamities, who dash themselves to pieces 
against obstacles, which, with a little prudence and 
foresight, they might have avoided. It is this : 
Se who will not he ruled ly the ruddevy mtcst be 
ruled hy the rock. It sets us at once upon some 
rocky and wreck-strewn coast ; we feel that it could 
nerer have been the proverb of an inland people. 
Do not talk Arabic in the house of a Moor* — 
that is, because there thy imperfect knowledge will 
be detected at once — this we should confidently 
affirm to be Spanish wherever we met it. Big and 
empty ^ like the Heidelberg ^W7i,f could have its 
home only in Germany ; that enormous vessel, 
known as the Heidelberg tun, constructed to con- 
tain nearly three hundred thousand flasks, having 
now stood empty for hundreds of years. As regards, 
too, the following, Not every pariah priest can wea/r 
Doctor Luther* 8 shoes^X we could be in no doubt to 
what people it appertains. , Neither could there be 
any mistake about this solemn Turkish proverb: 
Death is a black camel^ which kneels at every ma/rC^ 
gatey in so far, at least, as that it would be at once 
ascribed to the East. And this, The world is a car- 

* En casa del Moro no babies algarabia. 

f Gross und leer, wie das Heidelberger Fass. 

% Doetor Luther's Sehube tind nicbt alien Derfprieatern gereobt 



THE NATIONALnr OF PBOYEBBS. 61 

caae^ cmd they who gather round it a/re dogs^ plainly 
proclaims itself as belonging to those Eastern lands 
where the unowned dogs, prowling about the streets 
of a city, are the natural scavengers, that would 
assemble round a carcase thrown in the way. So, 
too, the form which our own proverb, Man^s extremr 
ity^ GocPs opporttmity^ assumes among the Jews, 
namely this. When the tale of Iricks is doubled^ 
Moses comes^ plai^y roots itself in the early his- 
tory of the nation, being an allusion to Exod. v. 
9-19, and without a knowledge of that history, 
would be unintelligible altogether. 

But while it is thus with some, which are bound 
by the very conditions of their existence to a narrow 
and peculiar sphere, or at any rate move more 
naturally and freely in it than elsewhere, there are 
others which we meet all the world over. True 
cosmopolites, they seem to have travelled from land 
to land, and to have made themselves a home in 
all. The Greeks obtained them probably from the 
older East, and again imparted them to the Eomans; 
and from these they have found their way into all 
the languages of the western world. 

There is indeed nothing in the study of proverbs, 
in the attribution of them to their right owners, in 
the arrangement and citation of them, which creates 
a greater perplexity than the circumstance of find- 
ing the same proverb in so many different quarters, 

* Cum duplicantur la^es^ Moses yemt 



62 FBOYSBBS 07 KATI0K8 GOMPABED. 

current among so many different nations. In quo- 
ting it as of one, it often seems as if we were doing 
wrong to many, while yet it is almost, or ottener 
still, altogether impossible to determine to what 
nation it first belonged, so that others drew it at 
second-hand from that one, even granting that any 
form in which we now possess it is really its oldest 
of all. More than once this fact has occasioned a 
serious disappointment to the zealous collector of the 
proverbs of his native country. Proud of the rich 
treasures which in this kind it possessed, he has very 
reluctantly discovered, on a fuller investigation of 
the whole subject, how many of these which he 
counted native, the peculiar heirloom and glory of 
his own land, must at once, and without hesitation, 
be resigned to others, who can be shown, beyond 
all doubt, to have been in earlier possession of them : 
while in respect of many more, if his own nation 
can put in a claim to them as well as others, yet he 
is compelled to feel that it can put in no better than, 
oftentimes not so good as, many competitors.* 

It is, indeed, oftentimes a veritable surprise to 
discover the venerable age and antiquity of a prov- 
erb, which we have hitherto assumed to be quite a 
later birth of modem society. Thus we may, per- 
haps, suppose that well-known word which forbids 

* Kelly, in the preface to hia very nsefal collection of Scotch prov- 
erbs^ describes his own disappointment at making exactly such a dis- 
covery as this. 



AGE OF FBOYEBBS. 63 

the too accnrate scanning of a present — One must 
not look a gift-horse in the mouth — to be of English 
extraction, the genuine growth of our own soil. I 
will not pretend to say how old it may be, but it is 
certainly as old as Jeronie, a Latin father of the 
fourth century, who, when some found fault with 
writings of his, replied, with th^t tartness which he 
could occasionally exhibit, that they were voluntary 
on his part, free-wiU offerings, and with this quoted 
the proverb, that it did not behoove to look a gift- 
horse in the mouth ;* and before it comes to us, we 
meet it once more in one of the rhymed Latin 
verses, which were such great favorites in the mid- 
dle ages: — 

Si qtus dat mannoS) ne qu»re in dentibua aimo& 

I havo seen it suggested that these, if not the 
source from which, are yet the channels by which, 
a great many proverbs have reached us. I should 
greatly doubt it. This much we may conclude from 
the existence of proverbs in this shape, namely, that 
since these rhymed or leonine verses went altogether 
out of fashion at the revival of a classical taste in 

* Jerome is a very great quoter of proyerba Thus from him we 
learn that lAan should have good memorieSy was already an old prov- 
erb. He speaks of one, oblitns veteria proyerbii : Mendaces memores 
esse oportere — a proverb indeed which we meet with before him in 
Quintilian, Inst. Orat, ]. 4 ; and I am not sure whether any other 
but he has preserved for us that^ Bos lassus fortius figit pebem, with 
which he warns the younger Augustine not to provoke a contest with 
him, the aged and weary, but not therefore less formidable antagonist 



54r PBOYKBBS 07 ISTJLTIOSB OOMPABBD. 

the fifteentli centary, such proverbs as are found in 
this form, may be affirmed with a tolerable certainty 
to date at least as far back as that period ; but not 
that in all, or even in a majority of cases, this shape 
was their earliest. Oftentime the proverb, in its 
more popular form, is so greatly superior to the same 
in this its Latin monkish dress, that the latter, by its 
tameness and flatness, betrays itself at once as the 
inadequate translation, and we can not fail to regard 
the other as the genuine proverb. Many of them 
are "so essentially Teutonic that they frecjuently 
appear to great disadvantage in the Xatin garb 
which has been huddled upon them."* Thus, when 
we have on one side the English, Hungry beUie$ 
have no earsj and on the other the Latin, 

JeJQnits venter non andit yerba libenter, 

who can doubt that the first is the proverb, and the 
second only its versification ? or that the old Greek 
proverb, A rolling stone gathers no moss, may very 
well have come to us without the intermediation of 
the medieval Latin, 

Kon fit hirsutua lapis hinc atqne inde yolutus t 

And the true state of the case comes out still more 
clearly, where there are two of these rhymed Latin 
equivalents for the one popular proverb, and these 
quite independent of each other. So it is in respect 
of our English proverb : A bird in the hand is 

* KevblE) Solomon and Saturn, p. 5d. 



fiH¥HS3> LA.TXN P&OTBBSS* v5 

wcrth i/ico in the bushy wliich appears in this forxDi 

Una ayifl in dextrft melior qnam qnatnor extra; 

and also in this, 

Capta avis est plnris quam mille in gramine ruri& 

Who can fail to see here two independent attempts 
to render the same saying ? Sometimes the Latin 
line confesses itself to be only the rendering of a 
popular word; thus is it with the following : — 

Ut dicunt mnlti, cito transit lancea stulti ; 

in other words, A fooVs lolt is soon shot. 

Much, I think, might be learned from knowing 
what those truths are, which are so felt to bo true 
by all men, that all love to have them in these com- 
pendious forms, wherein they may pass readily from 
mouth to mouth : which, thus cast into some happy 
form, have commended themselves to almost all 
people, and have become a portion of the common 
stock of the world's wisdom, making for themselves 
a recognition and a home in every land. Such a 
proverb, for instance, is Man proposes^ Ood dis- 
poses. I am inclined to believe that every nation in 
Europe has it, so deeply upon all men is impressed 
the sense of Hamlet's words, if nof the words them- 
selves: — 

"There's a divinity that shapes men's ends^ 
Rough-hew them how they will." 

Sometimes the proverb does not actually in so 
many words repeat itself in various tongues. "We 



56 PBOTEBBS OF NATIONS OOMPABED. 

have indeed exactly the same thought ; but it takes 
an outward shape and embodiment, varying accord- 
ing to the various countries and periods in which it 
has been current. We have proverbs totally diverse 
from one another in their form and appearance, but 
which yet, when we look a little deeper into them, 
prove to be at heart one and the same, all these 
their differences being thus only, so to speak, varia- 
tions of the same air. These are almost always an 
amusing, often an instructive study; and to trace 
this likeness in difference has an interest lively 
enough. Thus the forms of the proverb, which 
brings out the absurdity of those reproving others 
for a defect or a sin, to whom the same cleaves in an 
equal or in a greater degree, have sometimes no 
visible connection at all, or the very slightest, with 
one another ; yet for all this the proverb is at heart 
and essentially but one. We say in English : The 
hiln calls the oven, " Burnt house ;" — the Italians: 
Thejpcm says to thejpot, ^^Keep off, or you^ll smutch 
77i«"* — the Spaniards : The raven cried to the croWy 
^'Avaunty hlachamoor^^-f — the Germans: One ass 
nicJcnam^es another, " Zong Ears^^X — ^^^^ it must 
be owned there is a certain originality in the Catalan 
version of the proverb : Death said to the mam, with 
his throat cut, " How ugly you looTcP Under how 

* La padella dice al pajiiolo, *' Fatti in ld» che tu mi tignL** 
f Dijo la corneja al euervo, " Qaitate alia, negro." 
X Ein Esel schimpft den andero, " Langohr." 



tabiahons of fboysbbs. 67 

rich a variety of forms does one and the same 
thought array itself here. 

Let me quote another illustration of the same fact. 
We probably take for granted that CoaiU to New- 
casUe is a thoroughly English expression of the 
absurdity of sending to a place that which already 
abounds there, water to the sea, fagots to the wood : 
and English of course it is in the outward garment 
which it wears ; but in its innermost being it be- 
longs to the whole world and to all times. Thus 
the Greeks said : Owls to AthenSy* Attica abound- 
ing with these birds — the Kabbis : Enchantments 
to Egypty Egypt being of old esteemed the head- 
quarters of all magic — the Orientals: Pepper to 
Sindostan — and in the middle ages they had this 
proverb: Indvlgences to Bome^ Kome being the 
centre and source of this spiritual traflBic — and 
these by no means exhaust the list. 

Here are some other variations of the same de- 
scription, though not running through quite so 
many languages. Thus compare the German, Who 
lets one sit on his shoulders^ shall have him pres- 
enthf sit on his heady\ with the Italian, If thou 
suffer a calf to he laid on thee^ within a Utile 
they^ll clap on the cow^X and again with the Span- 

f Wer sich auf der Achsel aitzen laBst^ dem sitzt man naehher auf 
dem Kopfe. 

t Se U lasd metier in spalla il yiteUo, quindi a poco ti metteran 
la yacoa. 

3* 



58 PBOVSBBS OF nauohb oqmpased. 

ish, Oi/ve me where I may eit down; I wiU m43Lke 
wherejm^y lie down.^ They all three plainly con- 
tain one and the same hint, that it is advisable to 
resist undue liberties at the outset, but under how 
rich and humorous a variety of forms. Not very 
different are these that follow. We say: Davh 
yov/reelf with honey ^ cmd you^U he covered with 
y^ee — the Danes : Make yourself am, asSy and you'll 
have every man's sack on your shoulders — while 
the French : Who makes himself a sheep^ the wolf 
devours him\ — and the Persians : Be not all sugary 
or the world will swaUow thee up — to which they 
add, however, as its necessary complement, nor yet 
all wormwood^ or the world will spit thee ouLX 
Or again, we are content to say without a figure : 
The receiver's as had as the thief — but the French : 
Se sins as much who holds t/ie sack^ as he who puts 
into it\ — and the Germans: JETe who holds the 
ladder is as guilty as he who m^ounts the wall.^ 
Or once more, the Kussians say : Call a peasant 
^^ Brother j'' he'll demand to he called ^'Father'' — 
the Italians : Give a peasant your finger^ he'll grasp 
gour fist.^ Many languages have this proverb: 

* Dame donde me auente, que yo hard donde me acaeste. 
f Qui se fait brebia, le loup le mange. 

X There is a Catalan proverb to the same effect: Qui de tot es 
moll, de tot es foil. 

I Autant pdche eelni qui tient le sac, que celui qui met dedang. 
§ Wer die Leiter halt, ist so schuldig wie der Dieb. 
Y Al yillano^ se gli porgi il dito, ei prende la mana 



JtABBINIOAL FBOYSBBS. 68 

Go^ gives the cold according to the cloth:* it is 
very beautiful, but attains not to the tender beauty 
of our own: Ood tempers the wind to the shorn 
IdTnh. 

And, as in that last example, so not seldom will 
there be an evident superiority of a proverb in one 
language over one, which however resembles it 
closely in another. Moving in the same sphere, it 
will yet be richer, fuller, deeper. Thus our own, 
A Inimt child fears the fire^ is good ; but that of 
many tongues, A scalded dog fears cold water ^ is 
better still. Ours does but express that those who 
have suffered once will henceforward be timid in 
respect of that same thing from which they have 
Buffered ; but that other the tendency to exaggerate 
such fears, so that now they shall fear even where 
no fear is. And the fact that so it will be, clothes 
itself in an almost infinite variety of forms. Tlius 
one Italian proverb says : A dog which has been 
beaten with a sticky is afraid of its shadow / and 
another, which could only have had its birth in the 
sunny south, where the glancing but harmless lizard 
BO often darts across your path : He who has been 
bitten by a serpent^ is alarmed by a lizard.f With 
a little variation from this, the Jewish Eabbis had 
said long before : ITe who has been bitten by a ser' 

* Diet! donne le froid selon le drap. — Cada cual siente el frio como 
anda yestido. 
f Cui serpe mozzioa, 1uo«rta teme. 



60 PSOTEBBS OF NATIONS COMPAfiED. 

jpenty is afraid of a rope's end / even that vddcli 
bears so remote a resemblance to a serpent as tliis 
does, shall now inspire him with terror ; and the 
Cingalese, still expressing the same thought, but 
with imagery borrowed from their own tropic clime : 
The man who has received a heating from a fre- 
brandy runs away at sight of a firejh/. 

Some of our Lord's sayings contain the same les- 
sons which the proverbs of the Jewish Rabbis con- 
tained already ; for he was willing to bring forth 
even from his treasury, things old as well as new ; 
but it is very instructive tQ observe how they ac- 
quire in his mouth a dignity and decorum, which, 
it may be, they wanted before. We are all familiar 
with that word in the Sermon on the Mount, "Who- 
soever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him 
twain." The Eabbis had a proverb to match, lively 
and piquant enough, but certainly lacking the 
gravity of this, and which never could have fallen 
from the same lij^: If, thy neighbor call thee an 
ass J put apacksaddle on thy back; do not, that is, 
withdraw thyself from the wrong, but rather go 
forward to meet it. For thus, in least as in greatest, 
it was ffis to make all things new. 

Sometimes a proverb, without changing its shape 
altogether, will yet on the lips of different nations 
be slightly modified ; and these modifications, slight 
as often they are, may not the less be eminently 
characteristic. Thus, in English we say, The river 



JTTNO AND HA2n>BAB1TLTJS. 61 

pasty and OodforgoUen^ to express with how mourn- 
ful a frequency He whose assistance was invoked, 
it may have been earnestly, in the moment of peril, 
is remembered no more, so soon as by his help the 
danger has been surmounted. The Spaniards have 
the proverb too; but it is with them: The rwer 
pasty the saint forgotten^ the saints being in Spain 
more prominent objects of invocation than God. 
And the Italian form of it sounds a still sadder 
depth of ingratitude : The peril pasty the saint 
mocked yf the vows made to him in peril remaining 
unperformed in safety ; and he treated something as 
we are told that Juno was treated by Mandrabulus, 
the Samian ; who, having under her auspices dis- 
covered a gold mine, in his instant gratitude vowed 
to her a golden ram ; which he presently exchanged 
in intention for a silver one ; and this for a very 
small brass one ; and this for nothing at all ; the 
rapidly descending scale of whose gratitude, with 
the entire disappearance of his thank-offering, might 
very profitably live in our memories, as so perhaps 
it would be less likely to repeat itself in our lives. 

* El no pasado, el santo olvidado. 
f Passato il punto, gabbato il santa 



62 POSTBT. BTOm 07 FB0TEBB8. 



LECTURE IIL 

THB POBTET, 'NJIT, AND WISDOM, OF PBOTEBBS. 

In the first of these lectnres, I considered the form 
and outward generation of the proverb ; in my sec- 
ond, the proverbs of different nations in their rela- 
tion to each other. In my three lectures which re- 
main, I shall strive to justify the attention which I 
have claimed on their behalf from you, not merely 
by appealing to the authority of others, who at dif- 
ferent times have prized and made much of them, 
but by bringing out and setting before you, so far 
as I have the skill to do it, some of their leading 
merits. Their wit, their wisdom, their poetry, the 
delicacy, the fairness, the manliness, which charac- 
terize many, their morality, their theology, will all 
by turns come under our consideration. Yet shall 
I beware of presenting them to you as though they 
embodied these nobler qualities only. I shall not 
keep out of sight that there are proverbs coarse, 
selfish, unjust, cowardly, profane ; " maxims" wholly 
undeserving of the honor implied by that name.* 

* Begnls qius inter maxtmoi numerari merentnr. 



IHAGEBT OF PIM>ySBB8. 68 

Still as mj pleasure, and I doubt not yours, is rather 
with the wheat than with the chaff, I shall prefer to 
dwell in the main on the nobler features which they 
offer. 

Whatever is from the people, or truly for the 
people — whatever either springs from their bosom, 
or has been cordially accepted by them — still more, 
whatever unites both these conditions — will have 
poetry, imagination, in it. For little as the people's 
craving after wholesome nutriment of the imagina- 
tive faculty, and after an entrance into a fairer and 
more harmonious world than that sordid and con- 
fused one with which often they are surrounded, is 
duly met and satisfied, still they yearn after all this 
with an honest, hearty yearning, which must put to 
shame the palled indifference, the only affected en- 
thusiasm of too many, whose opportunities of culti- 
vating this glorious faculty have been so immeas- 
urably greater than theirs. This being so, and prov- 
erbs being, as we have seen, the sayings that have 
found favor with the people, their peculiar inherit- 
ance, we may be quite sure that there will be po- 
etry, imagination, passion, in them. So much we 
might affirm beforehand : our examination of them 
will confirm the confidence which we have been 
bold to entertain. 

Thus we may expect to find that they will con- 
tain often bold imagery, striking comparisons ; and 
such they do. Let serve as an example our own, 



64 POETEY, ETC., OF PE0YEBB8. 

Chay hai/rs are deaWa hlossoms ; or the ItaKan, 
Time is an inaudible fiU ;* or the Greek, Mam, a 
hubhUj which Jeremy Taylor has expanded into 
such glorious poetry in the opening of the Holy 
Dying ; or that Turkish proverb, which has been 
quoted already in another connection : Death is a 
llojck camel which hneeU at every man! a gate / to 
take up, that is, the burden of a coffin there ; or 
this Arabic one, worthy of Mecca's prophet him- 
self, and of the earnestness with which he realized 
Gehenna, whatever else he may have come short 
in: There a/re no fams in hell; or this one, also 
from the East : Sold aU skirts of thy mantle ex- 
tended when heaven is raining gold; do not fail, 
that is, to improve to the uttermost the^happier cri- 
ses of thy spiritual life ; or this one, current in the 
middle ages : Whose life lightens^ his words thun- 
der ;^ or, once more, this Chinese: Towers a/re 
measured hy their shadows^ amd grea/t men hy their 
calv/mnia/tors ; however, this last may have some- 
what of an artificial air as tried by our standard of 
the proverb. 

There may be poetry in a play upon Words ; and 
such we shall hardly fail to see in that beautiful 
Spanish proverb : La verdad es^ siempre verde, 
which I must leave in its original form ; for were I 

* n tempo d una lima sorda. 

t Cujus yita fulgor, ejoB verba tonitrua. C£ Biark iiL 17 : viol 
fifwrns. 



wrr m pboyxsbs. 65 

to translate it, The truth is always greeriy its charm 
and chief beauty would be looked for in vain. It 
finds its pendant and complement in another, which 
I must also despair of adequately rendering : Gloria 
vam^aflorece^ y no gra/aa; which would express this 
truth, namely, that vain glory can shoot up into 
stalk and ear, but can never attain to the full grain 
in the ear. Nor can we, I think, refuse the title of 
poetry to this eastern proverb, in which the wish 
that a woman may triumph over her enemies clothes 
itself thus : May her enemies stumble over her hair; 
— may she flourish so, may her hair, the outward 
sign of this prosperity, grow so rich and long, may 
it so sweep the ground, that her detractors and per- 
secutors may be entangled by it and fall. 

And then, how exquisitely witty many proverbs 
are ! Thus, not to speak of one familiar to us all, 
which is perhaps the queen of all proverbs. Sell is 
pamed with good intentions^ take this Scotch one : 
A man may love his house well without riding on 
the ridge ; it is enough for a wise man to know 
what is precious to himself, without making him- 
self ridiculous by evermore proclaiming it to the 
world ; or this of our own : When the devil is dead^ 
he never wants a chief mourner ; in other words, 
there is no abuse so enormous, no evil so great, but 
that the interests or passions of some will be so 
bound up with its continuance that they will lament 
its extinction ; or this Italian : When rogues go in 



66 POETBT, VSC.y OF PBOTEBBS. 

prooeaaiony the devil holda the cross;* when evil 
men have it thus far their own way, then worst is 
best, and in the inverted hierarchy which is then set 
up the foremost in .badness is foremost also in such 
honor as is going. Or consider this German one, 
in which the tender mercies of the feudal lords, of 
whom one is supposed to be speaking, are excel- 
lently parodied : One jnust not he too hard on the 
peasants — hew off his hands and hisfeet.f Here 
is another from the same quarter, noting with slight- 
est exaggeration a measure of charity which is only 
too common: JETe will swallow an egg^ and give 
away the shells in alms. The Spaniards have a 
cognate proverb : Let that which is lost he for God; 
one that to us will be only witty, indeed only intel- 
ligible, when we know the story of its birth ; but 
which then will be owned to touch with finest skill 
some of the subtlest treacheries of the heart. The 
story is this, as given by the leading Spanish com- 
mentator on the proverbs of his nation : The father 
of a family, making his will and disposing of his 
goods upon his death bed, ordained concerning a 
certain cow which had strayed, and had been now 
for a long time missing, that if it were found, it 
should be for his children ; if otherwise, for God : 
and hence the proverb. Let that which is lost he for 
Godj arose. 

♦ Quando i furbi yanno in processlone, il diatolo porta la crooe. 
f Der Bauer ist nit zu verderben : man ban' ibm denn Hand und 
FoMab. 



moVEBBS AB0T7T ALL IGBST. 67 

The wit of proverbs spares few or none. They 
are, as may be supposed, especially intolerant of 
fools. We say : Fools grow without watering / no 
need therefore of adulation or flattery, to quicken 
them to a ranker growth ; and the Russians : Fools 
a/re not planted or sowed; they grow of themselves •} 
while the Spaniards: If folly were a pain, there 
would be crying in every house ;* and they have 
further an exquisitely witty one on learned folly as 
the most intolerable of all follies : A fool, unless he 
"knows Latin, is never a great fool.\ 

Their shafts of pointed satire are directed with an 
admirable impartiality againpt men of every degree, 
so that none of us will be found to have wholly es- 
caped. To pass over those, and they are exceed- 
ingly numerous, which are aimed at the members 
of the monastic orders, I must fain hope that this 
Bohemian one, directed against the clergy, is not 
true ; for it certainly does not argue in us a very 
forgiving temper in cases where we have been, or 
fancy ourselves to have been, wronged. It is as 
follows : Jf you have offended a clerk, kill him ; 
else ypu never will have peace with him,X Nor do 

* Si la locTira fuese dolores, en oada casa darian voeea 

f Tonto, sin eaber Latin, nunca es gran tonto. 

X It is Hubs who, denouncing the sins of the clergy of his day, has 
preserved this proverb for us : 'Malum proverbium contra nos eonfinx- 
erunt^ dicentes, Si offenderis clericum, interfice eum ; alias nunquam 
habebis pacem cum illo. Another proverb of an infinite wit is this 
Spanish : For las haldas del yicarlo sube el diablo al campanario. 



68 FOXTTBT, ETC.} OF FSOTEBBS* 

physicians appear, in the middle ages, to have been 
in very high reputation for piety ; for a Latin medi- 
eval proverb boldly proclaims: Where there a/re 
three physicians^ there are two aiheists^ And as 
for lawyers, this one, Legista^ nequista, expresses 
itself not with such brevity only, but with such 
downright plainness of speech, that I shall excuse 
myself from attempting to render it into English. 
Nor do other sorts and conditions of men escape ; 
thus of the miller the Germans have a proverb: 
What so iold as a miller's neckcloth, which takes a 
thief ly the throat every morning f\ Even-handed 
justice might perhaps require that I should find 
caps for other heads ; and it is not that such are 
wanting, nor yet out of fear lest any should be of- 
fended, but only because I must needs hasten on- 
ward, that I leave this part of my subject without 
further development. 

What a fine knowledge of the human heart will 
they often display I I know not whether this Per- 
sian saying on the subtleties of pride is a proverb 
in the very strictest sense of the word, but it is for- 
cibly uttered : Thou shalt sooner detect am, ant mo- 
ving in the da/rk night on the hlack.ea/rthy tha/n all 
the motions of pride in thy hea/rt. And on the 
wide reach of this sin the Italians say : If pride 

♦ Ubi trea medici, duo athel 

f Bebel: Dloitur in proverbio nostro; nihil ease audacins indusio 
molitorifl^ cum omni tempore matutino furem coUo apprehendat 



FBOTXBBS ABOUT PBIBS. 69 

ijoere as a/rt^ how many graduaUs we sho^ild have /* 
and how excellent and Bearching is this word of 
theirs on the different shapes which this Protean 
sin will assume : There are who despise pride with 
a greater pride,'\ one which might almost seem to 
have -^een founded on the story of Diogenes, who, 
treading under his feet a rich carpet of Plato's, ex- 
claimed, "Thus I trample on the ostentation of Pla- 
to." — "With an ostentation of thine own," was the 
other's excellent retort ; even as on another occa- 
sion he observed, with admirable wit, that he saw 
the pride of the cynic peeping through the rents of 
his mantle ; for indeed pride is something which 
can array itself as easily in rags as in purple ; the 
lowest place and the last is of itself no security at 
all for humility ; and, out of a sense of this, we bslj 
well : As proud go hchind as before. 

Sometimes, in their subtle observation of life, 
they arrive at conclusions which we would very 
willingly question or reject, but to which it is im- 
possible to refuse a certain amount of assent. Thus 
it is with the very striking German proverb : One 
foe is too mam,y ; a hundred friends a/re toofew,% 
There speaks out in this a sense of how much more 
aclme a principle in this world will hate be some- 
times than love. The hundred friends will wish 

* Se la superbia fosse arte, quanti Dottori aTressimo. 

f Tal sprezza la superbia con una ma^or superbia. 

X Ein feind ist sa yiel ; and hnndert freunde sind zu wenig. 



70 POETBT, ETC., OF PBOTKRBS. 

you well ; but the one foe will do you iU. Their 
benevolence wiU be ordinarily passive ; his malev* 
olence will be constantly active ; it will be animoS' 
ity, or spiritedness in evil. The proverb will have 
its use, if we are stirred up by it to prove it untrue ; 
to show that, in very many cases at least, •%jBre is 
no such blot as it affirms on the scutcheon of friend- 
ship. In the same rank of unwelcome proverbs I 
must range this Persian one : Of four things every 
man has more them he Jcnows : of sinSy of debts, of 
years J and of foes; and this Spanish : One father 
can support ten children / ten children can not srip- 
port one father ; which, in so far as it rests upon a 
certain ground of truth, suggests a painful reflec- 
tion in regard of the less strength which there must 
be i^ the filial than in the paternal affection, since 
to the one those acts of self-sacrificing love are easy, 
which to the other are hard, and often impossible. 
But yet, seeing that it is the order of God's provi- 
dence in the world that fathers should in all cases 
support children, while it is the exception when 
children are called to support parents, one can only 
admire that wisdom which has .made the instincts 
of natural affection to run rather in the descending 
than in the ascending line ; a wisdom to which this 
proverb, though with a certain exaggeration of the 
facts, bears witness. 

How exquisitely delicate is the ,touch of this 
French proverb : It is easy to go afoot, when one 



HASTEBS Ain> SlSBTAim. 71 

leads one^s horse hy the iridle.* How fine an insight 
into the inner workings of the human heart is here I 
It is easy to stoop from state, when that state may bo 
resumed at will ; easy for one to part with luxuries 
and indulgences which he only parts with exactly 
60 long as it may please himself. No reason indeed 
is to be found in this comparative easiness for the 
not " going afoot ;" on the contrary, it may be a 
most profitable exercise ; but every reason for not 
esteeming the doing so too highly, nor setting it in 
value beside the trudging upon foot of him who has 
no horse to fall back on at whatever moment he 
may please. 

There is, and always must be, some rough work 
to be done in the world — rouglf, but not therefore 
in the least ignoble ; and the schemes, so daintily 
conceived, of a luxurious society, which repose on 
a tacit assumption that nobody shall have to do 
this work, are touched with a fine irony in this Ara- 
bic proverb : jff^ I am master^ and thou art master j 
who shall drive the asses f\ 

And proverbs, witty in themselves, often become 
wittier still in their application — gems that acquire 
new brilliancy from their setting, or from some 
novel light in which they are held. No writer that 
I know of has a happier skill in thus adding wit to 

* n est ai86 d'aller k pied, qnsnd on tient son cheyal par la bride. 

f The Gallegan proverb, "Yon a lady, I a lady, who shall drive 
the hogs a-field ?" (" Vos dona, yo dona, quen botara a poroa fora?") 
if only a variation of thia. ' 



72 POETBY, ETC., OF PE0VEEB8. 

the witty than Fuller the church-historian. For in- 
stance, he is describing all the indignation, outcries, 
remonstrances, which the thousand-fold extortions, 
the intolerable exactions of the papal see gave birth 
to in England during the reigns of such subservient 
kings as our third Henry ; yet he will not have his 
readers to suppose that the popes fared a whit the 
worse for all this outcry which was raised against 
them : not so, for The fox thrives best when he is 
most cursed ;* the very loudness of the clamor was 
itself rather an evidence how well they were faring. 
Or again, he is telling of that duke of Buckingham, 
well known to us through Shakespeare's " Richard 
m.," who, having helped the tyrant to a throne, 
afterward took mortal displeasure against him; 
which, however, he sought to hide in the deep of 
his heart, but in vain ; for, as Fuller observes. It is 
hard to halt hefore a cripple. The arcH-hypocrite 
Kichard, he to whom dissembling was as a second 
nature, saw through and detected at once the shal- 
low Buckingham's clumsier deceit. And the Church 
History abounds with similar happy applications. 

But the glory of proverbs, that, perhaps, which 
strikes us most forcibly and most often in regard of 
them, ia their shrewd common sense, the sound 
wisdom for the management of our own lives, and 
of our intercourse with our fellows, which so many 

♦ A proverb of many tongiieB besides our own ; thus in the Ital- 
ian: Quanto piu la yolpo d maladetta, tanto maggior preda fa. 



WISDOM OF PEOVERBS. , 73 

of them contain. In truthj- there is no region of 
practical Kfe which they do not occupy, for which 
they do not supply some wise hints, and counsels, 
and warnings. ** Adages," indeed, according to the 
more probable etymology of that word, they are 
apt for action alid usq.* 

Thus, how many of these popular sayings, and 
what good ones there are oh the wisdom of govern- 
ing the tongue — I speak not how of those urging 
the duty^ though such are by no means wanting — 
but tjie wisdom^ prudence, and profit, of knowing 
.how to keep silence as well as how to speak. The 
Persia^!, perhaps, is fiamiliar td many : Speech is 
silvern^ silence' is golden; with which we may com- 
pare the Italian: JTe iffho speaks-, sows; he who 
keeps silence, re(ips;f and on the safety that is in 
silence, I know none happier than ariother from the 
same quarter, and one most truly characteristic: 
Silence was never written' down ;X while the irrev- 
ocableness of the word spoken is set out by many 
striking comparisons { it is the arrow from the bow, 
the stone from the sling, and can as little be re- 
called as these. 1 Our own, ITe who says what he 
UkeSj shall heaa* what he ddes not like, gives a fur- 
ther motive for self-govemnaent-in speech ; and this 

♦ Adagia, ad agendum apta; This is ihe etymology of the word 
given by Festiis. . . . 

f Chi parla semina, chi lace raccoglie. . * . 
X n tacer non fu mai sorittoi 
I Palabra de boca, piedra de honda. ' 
'4. * 



74 POETET, ETC., OF PBOVEBBS. 

Spanisli one is in a higher strain : The evil which 
issues from thy mouthy falls into thy hosom.* Nor 
is it enough to abstain ourselves from all such 
Words ; we mlist riot malce ourselves partakers in 
those of others, which it is only too easy to do ; for, 
as the Chinese have said vei:y well : ffe who laugJts 
dt an impertinence^ makes himself its accomplice. 

And th.en in proverbs not. a few what profitable 
Warnings have we against the fruits of evil compan- 
ionship, as.in that Jiomely one of our own : He that 
lies down with dogs^ shall rise up with fleas ; or, 
again, in the old Hebrew one : Two dry sticks will 
set on fl/re one green ; oi*, in anotKer from tlie East, 
which has to do with the same theme, and shows 
whither such companionship will lead: JSe tha/t 
takes the raven for a ^uide^ shall light upon coflr- 
rion, ^ .• . 

What warnings domany contaiij against unrea- 
sonable expectations^, against a looking for perfec- 
tion in a world of imperfection, and generally a de- 
manding of njorQ frotn life than life ©afn yield 1 We^ 
note vfery well th^ folly .of one addicted to this, say- 
ing: He eapecis better hread than can he made of 
wheat; and tlie Portuguese :• J^^ that will ha/oe a 
horse without faulty let him go afoot. Again, what 
a good word of caution in respect of the wisdom of 
considering oftentimes a step which, being once 
taken, is taken for ever, lies in the following Eus- 
* £1 mtJ qae de tu bocajBole, en tti seno se oae. 



SHBEWD SENSE IN FBOYEBBS* 78 

sian proverb: Measv/re thy cloth ten times; thou 
canst cut it hut once. And in this Spanish the final 
issnes «f procrastination are well set forth : JBy the 
street oj^ '^ By-andrby*^ one arrives at the house of 
"iV<3iJer."* And here is a word which we owe to 
Italy, and which, laid to heart, might keep men out 
of lawsuits, or, being in them, from refusing to ac- 
cept tolerable terms of accommodation: The roies 
of Iwwyers a/re lined with the obstinacy of suitors.f 
Other words of wisdom and warning, for so I must 
esteem them, are these— ^ this, on the danger -of 
being overset by prosperity : Everything may he 
homcj except good fortvms ;% or of forgetting its 
author: In prosperity no altars snfoTce ;\ this, on 
the disgrace which will, sooner or later, follow upon 
dressing ourselves out in intellectual finery that 
does not belong to us : Who arrays himself in oth- 
er merCs ga/rments^ they si/rip him in the Tniddle of 
the street ;% he is detected and laid bare when and 
where detection is most shameful. And here is a 
* ' German proverb on the importance of knowing one 
thing well, rather than many things ill : The master 
of one trade will support a wife amd seven children : 
the master of seven will not support himself.^ 

* For la csUe de despnes se ya si la oasa do niinca. 
f Le yeeti degl' avrocati sono fodrate deir ostinazion del litigantL 
X Ogni cosa si sopporta, eceetto il biion tempo. 
I Nella prosperity non fumano gF altarL 
§ Quien con ropa ageoa se yiste, en la calle se queda encueros. 
^ Meister eioer Knnst nahrt Weib nnd sieben Kinder ; Meister der 
neben Kiinste nahrt sich selber nicht. 



76 POETRY, ETC., OF PBOYE&BS. 

Of the same miflcellaneons character, and derived 
from quarters the most diverse, but all of them of 
an excellent sense or shrewdness, are the following. 
This is from Italy : Who sees not the bottom, let Mm 
not pass the water,* . This is current among the free 
blacks of Hayti : Before crossing thervoer^ do not 
curse the crocodile^ s mother ^\ provoke not wanton- 
ly those in whose power you presently may be. 
This i6 Spanish : Call me not " olvoe^^ tiU you see 
me gathered ;% being nearly parallel to our own: 
ProAse a fair day at night; and this French : Take 
the first admce of a woman, a/nd not th& second ;\ 
a proverb of much wisdom ; for in processes of rea- 
soning, out OT which the second coimsels would 
spring, women may and will be inferior to us ; but 
in intuitions, moral ones above all, they surpass us 
far. They have what Montaigne ascribes to them 
in a remarkable word,. V^sjprit primesa/uMer — that 
which, if it is to take its prey, must take it at the 
first bound. 

And I can not but think that for as many as are 
seeking diligently to improve their time and oppor- 
tunities of knowledge, with at the same time little 

* Chi non vede il fondo, nonpassi Tacqua. 

\ Avant traverse riyier, pas jur4 maman caiman. This and an- 
other Hay tian' proverb which' I quote, I have derived from a curions 
article, |* Lei Mceurs^et, la Litterature N^gres," by Gustave D'Alauz, 
in the Revne dea Deux Mondea, Mai 15™, 1862. 

X "No mi digas oliva, hasta que me veas cogida. - 

I Prenda le premier conseil d'ane femme, et non le second. 



OO^SJPiSNJyiAy DISPENDIA. 77 

of either which they can call their own, a very use- 
ful hint and wanting against an error which lies 
very hear, is contained in the little Latin proverb : 
Compendia, dispendia. Not indeed for them only, 
but for all and in numberless respects it often proves 
true that a fihort cut may be a very long way home ; 
y^t the proverb- can never be applied better than 
ta those little catechisms of science, those skeleton 
outlines of history^ those epitomes of all useful infor- 
^mation, those thousand delusive short cuts to the 
attainment of that knowledge which can iadeed 
only be acquired by those who travel on :the king's 
highway^ on the old, and as I must still call it, the 
royal road of patience, of perseverance, and of toil. 
Surely these compendiay so- meager and so hungry, 
with little food for the intellect, with less for the af- 
fectioiis,*we may style with fullest right dispendia, 
wasteful as they generally prove of whatever time 
and labor, and money, is bestowed upon them. 

And. being on the subject of books and the'choice 
of books, let me put before you a proverb, and in 
this reading age a very serious one ; it comes to us 
froni Italy, and it says : There is no worse rohher 
than a 'bad looJcJ^ Indeed, none worse, nor so bad ; 
other robbers may spoil us of our money, but this 
one of our "goods" — of our time at any rate, even 
assuming the book to be only negatively bad ; but 
of how much more of our principles, our faith, our 
* Non y^ d 11 peggior ladro d* un oattiyo libro. 



n POETEY, BTO., OF FBOVEBBS. 

purity of heart, supposing its badness to be positive, 
and not negative only ! 

Here are one or two prudent words on education : 
A child may ha/ve too much of its mother^ a blessing. 
Yes, for that llessing may be no blessing, but rather 
a curse, if it take the shape of foolish and fond in- 
dulgence ; and in the same strain is this German : 
Better the child weep them the father.* And this, 
like many others, is found in so many tongues, that 
it can not be ascribed to one rather than another: 
There is msre in the garden than the gardener ever 
sowed. It is a proverb for many, but most of all for 
parents and teachers, that they lap not themselves 
in a false dream of security, as though nothing was 
at work or growing in the minds of the young in 
their guardianship, but what they themselves had 
sown there, as though there was not another who 
might very well have sown hiu. tares beside and 
among any good seed of their sowing. At the same 
time the proverb has also its happier side. There 
may be, there often are, better things also in this 
garden than ever the earthly gardener set there — 
seeds of the more immediate sowing of God. In 
either of its aspects this proverb is one deserving 
to be laid to heart. 

Proverbs will sometimes outrun and implicitly 
anticipate conclusions which are only after long 
struggles and efforts arrived at as the formal and 
* £b iat besBer, das Kind weine denn der Yater. 



undoubted conyiction of all thoijghtful men; A^^ . 
how long a conflict lias' that been established as' a 
maxim in political e^opiolny, which; the brief Italian 
proverb long ago announced:: Gold!»worth is gold.* 
What millions upon millions of,natiOnal wealth have 
been as good as thrown Into. the sea; from the ina- 
bility of those who have had the destinios.of nations 
in their hands to grasp -this simple proposition^ that 
everything which could purojiaae njoixey, or. which 
money would purchase, was as really wealth as the 
money itsWl What forciog^of national indiistried 
into unnatural channfeU-,£as resulted from this— • 
what mischievous rjestrictions in the buying and sol- . 
ling of one people with .ano&erl iSlay, can the 
truth which this proverb affiriris. be said pven now 
to be accepted without gaiiisaying— r.so. long as tha 
ftalk about the balance of -trade b^ingin favor of or^ 
^against a people, as the .fear o'f draining a country 
of its gold, still survive*?* * . . " . ' 

Here is a proverb. of many..tongues:. Orie sword 
keeps another in its scdbbardf-^sxir.elj a far wiser 
and far manlier word than .the puling yet mischiev- 
ous babble of our shalloxv peace-soeieties, which, 
while they profess to eml^ody, and they only to em- 
body, the true spirit of Christianity, proclaim them- 
selves in fact ignorant of all which it teaches ; for 

♦ Oro 6, che oro vale ; and somQ of the gold-diggers. tna:y find thlr 
alBO true : Piu vale gnadagn'ar m Idld che perder in oro. - 
f Una Bpadfi tien r altra ^el fodro. ..* 



80 POETEY, OTO., 6f PBOVBEBS. 

they dre&m of having peace the fruii, while the evil 
root out of which have grown all the wafs and 'fight- 
ings that have ever bei3n in the world— r namely, the 
lliBtd which stir in men's memberB — remain^ ds vig- . 
orouB as strong as ever. Not 30t— it is not they 
that are the peacemakers:, in the face of an evil 
world, and of a world determined to continue in its 
evil, He who lea/ra tke sword^ and though, he fain 
would not, yet khowfl how, if need be, to wield it, 
he hear^^eace.* # 

Let me add another, proverb which has its bear- 
ing on a subject which is occupying all patriot 
hearts' in England at this present time : Fa/rr^ff wor 
ter will 7wt quench newr jfi/re,\ They who watch 
for and are an^werabl^ to this nation for its safety, . 
and not its safety only, biit the inviolated honor of. 
its shores, have laid to heart, if not the pro verb, ytB** 
at all events the truth which it embodies, and have*** 
well resolved that an English fleet shall guard our 
English coasts. ' For . let us only suppose that a 
blow were stinick at the empire's heart, at the home 
and sai^ctuary of its greatness — no improbaible sup- • 
position when force arid fraud are met together, and 
are watching their opportunity to strike it— what 
profit would it be then that her mighty armaments 
covered the distant eeaa — that her soldiers were 
winning comparatively ban'en victories in Afirica 

* Qui porte 6p4e, porte paix. 

f Aequa lontaoa non Bpegne fiioco vicino. 



THE <3AB0ASS ANI> TEE EAGLES. 61 

and India ? The far-off water, as this proverb warns 
us, would altogether be useldlf^r quenching the 
near fire. . 

One, of the most remarkable features of a good 
proverb is.the singular variety of applications which 
it will admit, which indeed it challenges and invites. 
Not lying on the surface of things, but going deep 
down to their heart, you will find it capable of be- 
ing applied again and again, and under: circuna- 
stances the most different; like the gift of which 
Solomon spake, " whithersoever it turneth, it pros- 
pereth;^' or like a diamond cut and polished upon 
many sides, which refieets and refracts- the light 
upon every one. There can be no greater mistake 
than the attempt to tie it' down and restriQt it' to a 
single application, when indeed the very character 
of it is that it is ever finding or making new ones 
for itself. 

It is nothing strange that with words of Eternal 
Wisdom this should be so, and in respect of them 
my assertion needs not a proof. I will, notwith- 
standing, take as a first coiifirination 6( that which- 
I have just aflSrmed, a scriptural pr6vcrb, one which 
fell from the Lord's lips in his last prophecies about 
Jerusalem : " Wheresoever the carcase is, there will 
the eagles be gathered together" (Matt. xxiv. 28). 
Who would venture to saythat he. had exhausted 
the meaning of this wonderful saying?' For is it 
not properly inexhaustible? All history is a com- 

4* . 



83 POETRY, ETC., OF PBOVEKBS. 

ment on these wordfl. Wherever there is a church 
or a people^ abandoned by the spirit of life, and 
so a Carcase, tainting the atmosphere of God's moral 
world, around it assemble the ministers and messen- 
gers of Divine justice, "the eagles" (or vultures 
. more strictly, for the true eagle does not feed on 
aught but what itself has slain), the scavengers of 
God's moral world ; scenting out as by a ruysteri- 
ous instinct the prey from afar, and charged to re- 
move presently the offence out of the way. This 
proverb, for the saying has passed upon the lips of 
men, and thus has become such, is being fulfilled 
evermore. The wicked Canaanites were the carcase, 
when the children of Israel came into their land, the 
commissioned eagles that should remove them out 
of sight. At a later day the Jews were themselves 
the carcase, and the Komans the eagles; while in 
the progress of decay, when the Koman empire had 
quite lost the spirit of life, and those virtues of the 
family and the nation which had deservedly made 
it great, the northern tribes, the eagles now, came 
down upon it, to tear it limb from limb, and make 
room for a new creation that should grow up in its 
stead. Again, the Persian empire was the carcase ; 
Alexander and his Macedonian hosts the eagles that 
by sure instinct gathered round it to complete its 
doom. The Greek church in the seventh century 
was too nearly a .carcase to escape the destiny of 
such, and the armies of Islam scented their prey, 



and divided it among them.. In modern times Po- 
land was, I fear, ^icha cayoase^ and this one may 
affirm without in the least palliatitrg: their crime 
who partitioned it; for it migh4; have been just for 
it to suffer, what yet it was .most unrighteous for 
others to inflict. Nay, where do you not find an 
illustration of this, proverb, ff am- such instances on 
the largest scale, as these^ down* to that "of the silly 
and profligate heir, siirroutided by r sharpers and 
blacklegs, and preyed on by those I Everywhere it 
is true tliatj Wheresoever' the carcase is^ there wiU 
the eagles he gathered together. 

Or, again, consider such a proVerb as the short 
but well-known one: Extremes' rheetr Short as it 
is, it is yet a motto 5n which whole volumes might 
be written, which is finding its illustration every 
day — in small and in great-— in things trivial and 
in things most important— in the histories of single 
men, and in those of nations and'of churches. Con- 
sider some of its, every-day fulfilments — old age 
ending in second childhood — cold performing the 
effects of heat, and s.corching as heat would have 
done — the extremities alike of joy and of grief 
finding utterance in tears — the second singular 
"thou" instead of the plural "you," employed in 
more languages than on^o inferiors and to God, 
never to eq[uals ; just as servants and children are 
alike called by the Christian name, but. hot those 
who stand in the midway of intimacy between them. 



84 POETRY^ EfPC., OF FBOYEI^. 

Or, to take some further illastrations from the itnor- 
al worid, of extremes ineeting : observe hov often 
those, who begin their lives as spendthrifts end 
. them ias miseirs ; how often the flatterer and thd 
calumniator meet in- the same person — out of a 
sense of which the Italians say well : Who pcdnta 
me hefarej ilackens. me behind.* Observe how 
those who to-day. would -saciifice to Paul as a god, 
will to-morrow stone him as a malefactor. {Acts 
xiv. 18, 19; cf. xxviii. 4-r6.) Or see again in what 
close alliance hardness and softness, cruelty and 
self-indulgence, are continually found;. or, in law, 
how the snimmumjua becomes the summa vnjwriaj 
as in the case of Shylock's pound of flesh, which 
was indeed no more, than was in the bond. Or obr 
serve, on a -greater scale, as so lately in France, 
how a wild and frantic democracy may be trans- 
formed by the base. trick of .a conjuror into an atro- 
cious inilitary tyranny, t Or read thoughtfully the 
history of the church and of the sects, and you, will 
not fail to note what things apparently the most 
remote are yet in the most fe'arful proximity with 
one another : . how often, for example, a false asceti- 
cism has issued in frantic outbreaks of fleshly lusts, 
and how those who seemed at one time ambitious 
to Kve lives above men,^ve ended in living lives 

* Chi dinana mi pinge, di dietro mi tinge. 

f How and why it is that extremes here meet, and what are the 
inner affinities between a democracy and a tyranny, Plato has won- 
d«riully traced^ Rep., ii, p. SIT. 



BXTKEMES MEET* 80 

below beasts.. Again, take note of England at the 
-Restoration^ exchanging all. in a moment Ae sour 
strictness of the puritans for a license and debauch- 
ery unknown to it before. With these examples 
before you — not to speak of the many others which 
might be adduced — you will own, I think, that 
this proverb, Maf/remes meet^ or ita parallel, Too 
fa/r'eaet is west^ reaches very far into the heart 
of things; and with this for the present I must 
conclude. 



86k TfCR UO^AUTY OF PBOVSBBS. 



. LECTURE IV. 

THE MORALITY OF PBOYEBBS. 

•This present lecture •! shall dedicate to a subject 
which we have not- 'been able to leave wholly un- 
touched until npW, ioT it has offered itself to us con- 
tinually ; but which hitherto we have not regularly 
dealt with or considered ; I mean, the morality of 
proverbs. But .how,, it may be asked, can any 
general verdict be pronounced, about them? In a 
family like theirs, spread so widely over the face of 
the earth, are there not to be found noble and base, 
holy and profane, heavienly and earthly — yea, heav- 
enly, earthly, and devilish, ? What common judg- 
ment can be pronounced on' all these? Evidently 
none. The only question, therefore, for our con- 
sideration must be, whether tiiere exists any such 
• large arid' unquestionable preponderance, either of 
the better soiit or of\the worse, as shall give us a 
right to pronounce a verdict on the whole in their 
favor or against them, to affirm of them that their 
prevailing influence and weight is thrown into the 
balance of the good or of the evil. 

And here I am persuaded that no one can have 



80ME.PB0VISBS COABSIC. 87 

devoted any serious attention to this aspect pf the 
subject, but will own (and seeing how much popular 
morals are affected by popular proverbs, will own ' 
with thankfulness), that, not without serious excep- 
tions, yet still in the Inain they range themselves 
under the banners of the right and of the truth ; 
that of so many as move in an ethicalsphere at all, 
many more are children of light than of darkness. 
Indeed, the comparative paucity of unworthy prov- 
erbs is a very noticeable fact, and one to the causes 
of which I shall have presently to recur. At the 
same time, certain distinctions and explanations are 
necessary here. In the first place, I wpuld not, 
when I say this, in the least deny that an ample 
number of coarse proverbs are extant : it needs but 
to turn over a page or two of Ray's Oollection of 
English Proverbs^ or indeed of any collection in 
any tongue, which has not been weeded carefully, to 
convince oneself of the fact ; nor yet would I deny, 
that of these many may, more or less, live on the 
lips of men. Saving their birth, for the most part, 
in a period of a nation's literature. and life, when 
men are much more plain-spoken, and have far 
fe.wer reticences than is afterward the case, it is 
nothing strange that some of them, employing words 
forbidden now, but not forbidden then, should sound 
coarse and indelicate enough in our ears: while 
indeed there are others, the offence of which these 
considerations, while they may mitigate, are quite 



88 THE MosALrrr of pboybbbs. 

insufiicient to excuse. Bat at the same time, gross 
worlds and images (t speak not of wtoton ones), bad 
as they maj be, are altogether different from im- 
moral maxims, and .rules of Jife. And it is these 
immoral maxims, unrighteous, selfish, or otherwise 
unworthy rules, of which I would affirm the number 
to be, not absolutely, but relatively. small-. 

And then further, in estimating the morality of 
proverbs, this also will claim not to be foi-gotten. 
In die same manner as coarse proverbs are not 
necessarily immoral, so the application which is 
made of a proverb by us may yery often be hard- 
hearted and selfish, while yet the proverb itself is 
very far from so being. This lay hot in it of primary 
intention^ but only by our abuse ; and in the cases 
of several, these tv70 things, the proverb itself, and 
the ordinary employment of it, will demand to be 
kept carefully apart from one another. For in- 
stance : Se has made his hed^ and now he miist lie 
on it — As he has hrewed, so he must drink — As 
he has -sown^ so mitst he reap* — if these ar.e em- 
ployed to justify us in refusing to save others, so 
far as we may, from the consequences of th^eir own 
folly, or imprudence, or even guilt,. why then oae 
can only say they are very ill employed \ and there 
are few of us with whom it would not have gone 

* They hare for their Latin eqniyalents each as these : Colo quod 
aptlsti, ipei tibi nendom est— lit sementem feoerijB^ ita metes. — Qui 
vintim bibil^ fiecem bibat 



CHAErrr begiks at home. 89 

hardly, had all those about us acted in the spirit of 
these proverbs so misiiiterpreted ; had they refused 
to mitigate for us, so far .as they could, the conse- 
quences of our errors. But if the words are taken 
in their true sense,* as homely announcements of 
that law of divine retaliations in the world, accord- 
ing to which men shall eat of the fruit of their own 
doings, and be filled with their own ways, who shall 
gainsay them 3 What affirm they more than every 
p^e of Scripture, every turn of human life, is 
"affirming too, namely, that the everlasting order of 
God's universe can not be violated with impunity, 
that there is a cpntinual returning upon men of what 
they have -done, and that in their history we may 
rea'd their judgment ? 

Charity legina at homej is another of these prov- 
erbs which may be, perhaps often isjmade the plea 
of a selfish withholding of assistance from all but a 
few, whom we may include in our "at home,'^ while 
sometimes the proverb receives a narrower inter- 
pretation still, and self, and self only, is accounted 
to be *^at home/' And yet, in truth, what were 
that charity i^orth which did not begin at home, 
which did not preserve the divine order and propor- 
tion and degree ? Not for nothing have we been 
• groupe'd. in families and neighborhoods ; and he 
who will not recognise the divinely-appointed near- 
nesses to himself of some over others, who* thinks 
to be a cosmopolite without being a patriot, a philan- 



90 TBS icoBALnr or pboy]sbb3. 

thropist witkout owning a distinguishing love for 
them' that are peculiarly " his own," who „would 
tjius have a circumference without a centre, de- 
ceives his own heart, and affirming all men to be 
equally dear to him, is indeed affirming them to be 
equally indifferent. Home^ the family, this is as 
the hearth at which the affections, which are after- 

• ward to go forth and warm in a larger circle, are 
themselves to be kept lively and warm ; and the 
charity which did not exercise itself in outcomings 
of kiiidness and love in. the narrower, would be 
littfe likely to^seek a wider. range for itself: where- 
ever els© it may evdx ^^^ the larger its sphere the 
better, it must jetiegin-B.t home. 

There are, again^ proverbs which, from another 
point of view, might seem of an ignoble cast, and 
as ciilculated to .l6w6r the tone of morality among 
those who receive/th^m; , proposing as they do 
Becopdary, and therefore ujiworthy, motives to ac- 
tions, -which ought to be . performed out of the 
highest. *^I mean&uch as this : Honesty is the hest 
policy / where honesty is commended, not because 
it is right, but because it is most prudent and poli- 
tic, and has ' the promise of this present world. 

• Now doubtleps there ar^ proverbs, not a few which, 
lik43 this, move in the region of what has been called 
" prudential morality ;" and did we accept them as 
containing the -whole 'circle of motives to honesty 
or other right conduct, nothing could be worse, or 



PBOTEBBB ABOUT SELFISHNESS. 91 

more fitted to lower the moral standard of our lived. 
He who resolves to be honest because, and only be-' 
cause, it is the best policy, will be little likely long 
to continue honest at all. But the proverb does not 
pretend to usurp the place of an ethical rule f to 
cast down the higher law that should determine to 
honesty and uprightness, and to put itself in its 
room ; it only declares that honesty, let alone that 
it is the right thing, is also, even for this present ' 
world, the wisest^ Nor dare we, let me further add, 
despise prudential morality, such as is embodied in 
Bayings like this. The motives which it suggests 
are helps to a weak and tempted virtue, may prove 
great assistances to it in some passing moment of a 
violent temptation, however little they can be re- 
garded as able to make men for a continucmce even 
outwardly upright and true. 

And once more, proverbs are not to be accounted 
selfish, which announce selfishness; unless they do 
it, either avowedly recommending it as a rule and 
maxim of life, or, if not so, yet with an evident 
complacency and satisfaction in the announcement, 
and in this more xjovert and perhaps still more mis- 
chievous way, taking part with the evil which they 
proclaim. There are a great many proverbs which 
one would be . very thankful if there had been 
nothing in the world to justify or provoke ; for they 
contain nothing very complimentary to human na- 
ture : but seeing that there is, it would be idle to 



92 THE MOBALTTT 07 PBOVEBBS. 

wish them away; to wish that this evil had not 
found its utterance. Kay, it is much" better that it. 
should so have done ; for thus taking form and shape, 
and being brought directly under notice, it may be 
better watched against and avoided. Such prov- 
erbs,:not selfish, but rather detecting selfishness and 
laying it bare, are the following : thia Eussian, on 
the only too slight degree in which we are touched 
with other men's troubles: The hurden-ia light on 
the shoulders of another; with which the French 
may be compared : One has al/ways enough strength 
to hear the misfortwaes of one^S friends.* Such is 
this Italian : Every one draws the winter to his own 
miU;\ or as it appears in its Eastern shape, which 
brings the desert-bivouack before oiie's eyes : Every 
one rakes the embers to his own cake; such this 
Latin, on the comparative wastefulness whereVirith 
that which is another's is too often used: Men cut 
broad thongs from other rrherCs leather ;X with many 
more of the same character, which it would be only 
tod easy t^ bring together. . 

With all this, I wotdd not of course in the least 
deny that imnioral proverbs, and only too many of 
them, exist. For if they are, as we have claimed 
for them.to be, the genuine transcript of what is 

* On a toujours asaez de forces pour supporter le malheur de sea 
amia I confess this sounds to me rather like an imitation of Eoche- 
foucault than a genuine proverb. 

f Ognun tira F acqua al suo njoliuo. 

X Ex aliefio teigore lata secautur lora. 



XMMOBAL PBOYEBBS. 98 

Btimng in the hearts, and uttering itself by the li^s, 
of men, then,.since there is cowardice, untruth, sel- 
fishness, unhoKness, profaneness there, how should 
they be wanting here? The world is not so con- 
summate a hypocrite as the entire absence of all 
such would imply. There will be proverbs merely 
selfish, as our own:* Every one for himself^ amd 
God for u$ aU; or this Dutch: Self^s the mom;'"' 
or more shamelessly selfish and cynical still,, as the 
French : Better a grwpe for me^ than imo figs for 
thee;\ or such as express doubt and disbelief in the 
existence of any high moral integrity anywhere, as 
Every mem has his price ; or assume that poor men 
can scarcely be honest, as It is hard for an empty 
sack to stand straight / or take it for granted that 
every man would cheat every other if he could, as 
the French : Cotmt after yov/r father ;% or find 
cloaks and apologies for sin, as the German: Once 
is never ;\ or such as would imply that the evil of a 
sin lay not in its sinfulness, but in the outward dis- 
grace annexed to it, as the Italian : A sin concealed 
is half forgiven,^ Or again there will be proverbs 

* Zelf is de Man. 

f tPaime mieux tin raisin pour moi que deux figues pour toi. 

X Comptez aprds votre p<&re., 'Compare th« Spanish: ISsitte do8 
amigos un notario y dos testigos. 

I Einmal, keinmal. This proverb was turned to such bad us6a» 
that a German divine thought it necessary to write a tract against it 
There exist indeed several old works in German with such titles aa 
the following, Ungodly Proverbs and their Jtefutdtion, ' 

§ Peccato celato, mezzo perdonato. ' 



94 THE xosALnr of pjuovkkus. 

dastardly and base, as this Spanish: Drcm the 
snake from, its hole hy another marCs hamd ; pnt^ 
that is, another to the peril from which you shrink 
yourself; or more dastardly still, "scoundrel max- 
ims,'' as^an old English poet has called them ; as for 
instance, that one which is acted on only too often : 
One must howl with the wolves ;* in other words, 
when a general cry is raised against any, it is safest 
to join it, lest one be supposed to sympathize with 
its object; one -must howl with the wolves, that 
one may not be hunted by them. In the whole 
circle of proverbs I know no baser one, nor more das- 
tardly than this. And yet who will say that he has 
never traced in himself the cowardly temptation to 
obey it? And there will be, of which I shall spare 
you any examples, proverbs wanton and impure ; 
and not merely proverbs thus earthly and sensual, 
but devilish: such as some of those Italian on 
revenge which I quoted in my second lecture. 

But still these immoral proverbs, rank weeds 
among the -wholesome com, are comparatively rare. 
In the minority with all people, they are immeasur- 
ably in the minority with most. The fact is not a 
little worthy of our note. Surely there lies in it a 
solemn testimony, that however men may and do in 
their conduct continually violate the rule of right, 
yet these violations are ever felt to be such, inwardly 

* Badlj turned into a rhyming pentameter : — 

Consonns esto lupia^ earn qnibus eMe oupui 



PBOTEKBS ABOtJT MONSr* .^5 

confessed not to be the law of man's life^ bnt the 
transgressions of the law ; and thus, stficken as with* 
a secret shame, and paymg an unconscious homage 
to the majesty of goodness, they do not presume to 
raise themselves into maxims, nor with all their 
frequency pretend to claim recognition as. abiding 
standards of action. , . 

As the sphere in which the proverb moves is no 
imaginary world, but that actual and often very 
homely world which is round us and about us ; as it 
does not float in the clouds, but sets its feet firmly 
on this common earth of ours from which" itself once 
grew, being occupied with present needs and everyr 
day cares, it is only natural that such as have refer- 
ence to money should be numerous ; and in the 
main it would be well if the practice of the world 
rose to the height of its convictions as e'xpressed m 
these. Frugality is connected with so many virtues 
— at least, its contrary makes so many impossible— 
that the numeiious J)roverbial maxims inculcating 
this, than which none p'ediaps are more frequent on 
the lips of men, must be regarded as belonging to 
the better order; especially when taken with the 
check of others, which forbid this frugality from 
degenerating into a sordid and dishonorable- parsi- 
mony ; such, I mean, as ours : The groat is ill- 
saved which shames its master. In how many the 
conviction speaks out that the hastily-gotten will 
hardly be the honestly-gotten, that " he who makes 



98 TEB BlORALTrr OP PBOVKBBS. 

haste to he rich shall not be innocent," as when the 
Spaniards say : Se who will he rich in a year^ at 
the half -yeofip they hung him;* in others, the confi- 
dence that the ill-won will also bo the ill-Bpent,f 
that he who shuts np unlawful gain in his store- 
houses, is shutting up a fire that will one day destroy 
them. Very solemn and weighty in this sense- is 
the German proverb : The unrighteous penny cor- 
rtepts the righteous pound ;% and the Spanish, too, 
is striking ^ That which is am>ther^s alwofys yea/ms 
for its lord:\ yearns, that is, to be gone and get to 
its true owner. In how many the conviction is ex- 
pressed that this mammon, which more than any- 
thi9g else men are tempted to think God does not 
concern himself about, is yet given and taken away 
by him according, to the laws of his righteousness : 
given sometimes to his enemies and for their greater 
punishment, that under its fatal influence they may 
grow worse and worse, for Ths more the ca/rle 
riches^ he wretches; but oftener withdrawn, be- 
cause n6 due acknowledgment of him was made 
in its use ; as when the German proverb declares : 
ChaHty gives itself rich; covetousness hoa/rds itself 
poor ;% and the rabbis, with a yet. deeper signifi-*' 
cance : Alms a/re the salt of riches ; the true anti- 

.* Quien en tin.afio qtiiere ser rico, al medio le ahorcan. 
f Male parta male dilabuntur. — ^Wie gewonnen, bo zerronneiL 
X Ungerechter Pfennig verzehrt gerechten Thaler. 
I Lo ageno aiempre pia por su duello. - 
§ Der Gei2f fiammlet sich arm, die Milde giebt sich reich. 



MANLY PBOYSRBS. 97 

septic, that wWcIi shall prevent them from them- 
selves corrupting, and from corrupting those that 
have them ; which shall hinder them from develop- 
ing a germ of corruption, such as shall in the end 
involve in one destruction them and their owners.* 
Let me further invite you to observe and to ad- 
mire fhe prevailing tone of manliness which per- 
vades the great body of the proverbs of all nations: 
let me bid you to take note how very few there are 
which would fain persuade you that " luck is all," 
or that your fortunes are in any other hands, under 
God, than your own. There are some, but they are 
rare, to which the gambler, the idler, the so-called 
"waiter upon Providence," can appeal. For the 
most part, however, they courageously accept the 
law of labor. No pains, no gains — No sweaty no 
sweety as the appointed law and condition of man's 

* There is one remarkable Latin proverb on the moral cowardliness 
which it is the character of riches to generate, saying more briefly 
the same which Wordsworth said when he proclaimed — 

** That riches are akin 
To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death ;** 

it is this : Timidns Plutus ; and has sometimes suggested to me the 
question whether he might not have had it in his mind when he com- 
posed his great sonnet in prospect of the invasion, which begins — 
"These times touch moneyed worldlings with dismay** — 

not that his genius needed any such solicitation from without ; for 
the sonnet is only the natural outgrowth of that spirit and temper 
in which the whole series of noble and ennobling poems, the Sonnets 
to Liberty f is composed, and in perfect harmony with the rest; yet 
is it^ notwithstanding, in a very wonderful way shut up in the two 
words of the ancient proverb. 

5 



08 THE MOBALTTT OF FBOYEBBS. 

life. Where wilt thou go^ ox, that thou wUt not 
have to plough t* is the Catalan remonstrance ad- 
dressed to one, who imagines by any outward 
change of circumstances to evade the inevitable 
task and toil of existence. So, too, there is a 
worthy old classical proverb : Who will not the 
milly will not the meal;f and a Turkish : It is not 
with saying, ^^ Honey, Honey ^'* that sweetness will 
come into the mouth ; and to many languages that 
one with its striking image, Sloth, the key of pov- 
erty, % belongs : while, on the other hand, there arc 
in almost all tongues such proverbs as the follow- 
ing : Ood helps them that help themselves ;\ or as it 
appears with a slight variation in the Basque : God 
is a good worker, hut he loves to he helped; proverbs 
not strange, in their import at least, to the Arabian 
prophet, however some who call themselves by his 
name may have forgotten the lesson which they 
convey — not strange to him, if thp following well- 
spoken word has been rightly ascribed to him. One 
evening, we are told, after a weary march through 
the desert, he was camping with his followers, and 
overheard one of them saying, "I will loose my 
camel, and commit it to God ;" on which Mohammed 
took him up : " Friend, tie thy camel, and commit 

* Ahont anirds, bou, que no Uaures? I prefer this form of it to 
the Spanish : Adonde yra cl buejr, que no are ? 
t Qui vitat molam, vitat farinam. 
X Pereza» Uaye de pobreza. 
\ Dii facientes adjuvant 



PBOVKEBS ON SELP-RELIANOB. 99 

it to God ;" do, that is, whatever is thine to do, and 
then leave the issue in higher hands ; but till thou 
hast done this, till thou hast thus helped thyself, 
thou hast no right to look to Heaven to help thee. 

How excellently this unites genuine modesty and 
manly self-assertion : Sit in your ownpldce^ and no 
man can make you rise ; and how good this is, on 
the real dignity which there often is in doing things 
for ourselves, rather than standing by and suffering 
others to do them for us : Who has a mouthy let him, 
not say to another^ " Blow.^^* 

And as a part of this which I have called the 
manliness of proverbs, let me especially note the 
noble utterances which so many contain, summon- 
ing to a brave encountering of adverse fortune, to 
perseverance under disappointment and defeat, and 
a long-continued inclemency of fate. The sun of 
all days has not yet gone down ;\ — this Latin 
saying, though in its primary application intended 
for those who are at the top of Fortune's wheel, to 
remind them that they be not high-minded, for there 
is yet time for ihany a revolution in that wheel, is 
equally good for those at the bottom, and as it con- 
tains warning for those, so strength and hope for 
these ; for, as the Italians say : The world is for 
him who has patienoe^X And then, to pass over 

* Quien tiene boca, no diga k otro, "Sopla." 
f Nondum omnium dierum sol occidit 
X n mondo ^ di ohi ha pazi«nsa. 



100 THE HORALITY OF FBOTEBBS. 

some of our own, probably familiar to us all, 
how manful a lesson is contained in this Persian 
proverb : A stone that is fit for the wall is not left 
in the way. It seems made for them who appear 
for a while to be overlooked, neglected, passed by ; 
who perceive in themselves capacities, which as yet 
no one else has recognised, or cared to turn to 
account. Be fit for the wall; square, polish, pre- 
pare thyself for it ; do not limit thyself to the bare 
acquisition of such knowledge as is absolutely ne- 
cessary for thy present position ; but rather learn 
languages, acquire useful information, cherish what- 
ever aptitudes thou findest in thyself; and it is 
certain thy turn will come. Thou wilt not be left 
in the way ; sooner or later the builders will be glad 
of thee ; the wall will need thee to fill up a place in 
it, quite as much as thou needest a place to occupy 
in the wall. For the amount of real capacity in 
this world is so small, that places want persons to 
fill them quite as really as persons want to fill 
places ; although they may not be always as much 
aware of their want. 

And this Italian, If I have lost the ring^ yet the 
fingers a/re still here^"* is another of these brave 
proverbs of which I have been speaking. In it is 
asserted the comparative indifference of that loss 
which reaches but to things external to us, so long 
as we ourselves remain, and are true to ourselves. 

* Sd ben ho peno V anello, ho pur aiiche le dita. 



AB17SE OF PBOVEBBS. 101 

The Jmgers are far more than the ring : if indeed 
the former had gone, then ths man would have been 
maimed ; but another ring may come for that which 
has been lost, or even with none the fingers will bo 
fingers still. And as at once a contrast and com- 
plement to this, take another, expressing well the 
little profit which there will be to a man in pieces 
of mere good luck, which are no true outgrowths 
of anything which is in him ; the manner in which, 
having no root in himself out of which they grew, 
they will, as they came to him by hazard, go from 
him by the same : The knife which thou hast 
foimd in the highway^ thou wilt lose in the highr 
way,* 

But these numerous proverbs, urging self-reli- 
ance, bidding us first to aid ourselves, if we would 
have Heaven to aid us, must not be dismissed with- 
out a word or two at parting. Prizing them, as we 
well may, and the lessons which they contain, at the 
highest, yet is it good for us at the same time always 
to remember, that to such proverbs as these there 
lies very near such a mischievous perversion as this : 
"Aid thyself, and thou wilt need no other aid;" 
even as they have been sometimes, no doubt, under- 
stood in this sense. As, then, the pendant and 

* This proverb is onrrent among the free blacks of Hayti, and in 
their bastard French runs thus: Gambette ous trouv^ nen gan chimin, 
nen gan chimin ons ya pdd6 IL It may haye been originally French, 
at any rate tl^ French have a proverb very much to the same effect : 
Co qui vient par la flute s'en va par le tambour. 



102 THE MOBALITT OF PEOVEEBS. 

counter- weight to all of these, not as unsaying what 
they have said, but as fulfilling the other hemisphere 
in the orb of truth, let me remind you of such also 
as the following, often quoted or alluded to by Greek 
and Latin authors : The net of sleeping {fishermcm) 
takes ;* a proverb the more interesting, that we have 
in the words of the Psalmist (Ps. exxvii. 2) were 
they accurately translated, a beautiful and perfect 
parallel: "He giveth his beloved" (not "sleep," 
but) "jin their sleep ;" his gifts gliding into their 
bosoms, they knowing not how, and as little expect- 
ing as having labored for them. Of how many of 
the best gifts or every man's life will he not thank- 
fully acknowledge this to have been true ; or, if he 
refuse, and will acknowledge no eudcemonia^ no 
favorable providence in his prosperities, but will 
see them all as of work, how little he merits, how 
little likely ho is, to retain them. Let us hold fast, 
then, this proverb as the needful complement of 
those.f 

I feel that I should be wanting to hearers such as 
those present in this place — that I should fail in 
that purpose which has been, more or less, before 
me even in dealing with the lighter portions of my 

* E^j^ovrt K^TOi aiptT. — Dormienti rete trahit 

f The reader with a PlviarcKs Lives within his reach may turn to 
the very instructive little history told in connection with this prov- 
erb, of Timotheus, the Athenian commander ; a history which only 
requires to be translated into Christian language to contain a deep 
moral for all. (Sulla, c 6.) 



PBOVEBBS i:OB TOTJKO MEN. 103 

subject — if I did not earnestly remind yon of tlie 
many proverbs there are which, while they have 
their lesson for all, yet seem more directly addressed 
to those who stand, as so many do here, at the 
threshold of the more serious and earnest portion 
of their lives.- Take this Italian one, for instance : 
When you grind your corny give not the flour to the 
deviij ami the iran to God; in the distribution, that 
is, of your lives, apportion not your best years, your 
strength and your vigor, to tiie service of sin and 
of the world, and on^ly the refuse and rejected to 
your Maker ; the wine to others, and the lees only 
to him. Not so ; for, to take another ancient prov- 
erb,* which we have made very well our own, and 
which runs thus : It is too late to spare, when all is 
spent. The words have obviously a primary appli- 
cation to the goods of this present life ; it is ill saving 
here, when nothing or next to nothing is left to save. 
But they are applied well by a heathen moralist 
(and the application lies very near) to those who bo- 
gin to husband precious time, and to live for life's 
true ends, when life is nearly gone, is no^ at its 
dregs ; for, as he well urges, it is not the least only 
which remains at the bottom, but the worst.f On 
the other hand, The morning hour has gold in its 
mouth ;X and this, true in respect of each of our 

* Sera in imo parsitnonis. 

f Seneea (JSp. i.): IS'on enim tantum minimum in imo, sed pesai- 
mum remanet 

X Morgenstund' ha( Gold im Mund. 



104 THS MOBALTTY OF FBOYKRBS. 

days, in which the earlier hours given to toil will 
yield larger and more genial returns than the later, 
is true in a yet higher sense, of that great life-day, 
whereof all the lesser days of our life make up the 
moments, is true in respect of moral no less than 
mental acquisition. The evening hours have often 
only silver in their moUths at the best. Nor is this 
Arabic proverb, as it appears to me, other than a 
very solemn one, being far deeper than at first sight 
it might seem : Every day in thy life is a leaf in 
thy history / a leaf which shall once be turned back 
to again, that it may be seen what was written there, 
and that whatever was written may be read out in 
the hearing of all. 

And among the proverbs having to do with a pru- 
dent ordering of our lives from the very first, this 
Spanish seems well worthy to be adduced: That 
which the fool does in the end^ the wise man does 
at the beginning ;* the last with a good grace what 
the other with an ill ; he to much profit yhat the 
other only to little or to none. A word worth lay- 
ing tojjeart ; for, indeed, that purchase of the Sibyl- 
line books by the Koman king, what a significant 
symbol it is of that which finds place in almost ev- 
ery man's life — the same thing to be done in the 
end, the same price to be paid at the last, with only 
the difference that much of the advantage of an 
earlier compliance has passed away. The nine pre- 

* Lo que hace el loco k la postre, haee sabio al prineipia 



STUDY OF CLASSICS. 105 

cious volumes have shrunk to six> and those dwin- 
dled to three, while yet the like price is demanded 
for the few as for the many ; for the remnant now 
as would once have made all our own. 

I have already in a former lecture adduced a 
proverb which warns against a bad book as the 
greatest of all robbers. In respect, too, of books 
which are not bad — nay, of which the main staple 
is good, but in which there is yet an admixture of 
evil, as in so many that have come down to us from 
that old world not as yet partaker of Christ — there 
is a proverb, which may very profitably accompany 
us in our study of such : Wliere the lee sucks honey ^ 
the spider sucks poison^ Very good were it for us 
to keep this in mind, should we be studying, any 
of us, the great works which heathen antiquity, 
which Greece and Kome have bequeathed us. How 
much of noble, how much of elevating, what love of 
country, ^hat zeal for wisdom, may be drawn from 
them 1 yea, even to us Christians, what intellectual, 
what moral gains will they yield ! Let the student 
be as the bee looking for honey, and from the fields 
and gardens of classical literature he may store it 
abundantly in his hive. And yet from this same 
body of literature what poison may be drawn ; what 
loss, through familiarity with evil, of all vigorous 
abhorrence of it, till even the worst enormities shall 
come to be regarded with a speculative curiosity 
rather than with an earnest hatred ; yea, what last- 

5* 



106 THB HOBALITY OF PBOYSRBS. 

ing defilements of the imagination and the heart, 
till nothing shall be pure, the very mind and con- 
science being defiled ! Let there come one whose 
sympathies and affinities are with the poison and 
not with the honey, arid in these fields it will not be 
impossible for him to find deadly flowers and weeds 
from which he may suck poison enough. 

With a few remarks on one proverb more, I will 
bring this lecture to an end. It is this : Better a 
diamond with a flaw than a pehhU without one. 
Here, to my mind, is the assertion of a great Chris- 
tian truth, and of one which reaches deep down to 
the very foundations of Christian morality, the more 
valuable as coming to us from a people — the Chi- 
nese — beyond the range and reach of the influences 
of direct revelation. We may not be all aware of 
the many and malignant assaults which were made 
on the Christian faith, and on the morality of the 
Bible, through the character of David, by the blind 
and self-righteous deists of a century or more ago. 
Taking the scripture testimony about him, that he 
was the man after God's heart, and putting beside 
this the record of those great sins which he commit- 
ted, they sought to set these great yet still isolated 
offences in the most hateful light, and thus to bring 
at once him and those who praised him alike to 
shame. But all the while the man^ what he was — 
with this, with the moral sum total of his life, to 
which alone the scripture testimony bore witness — 



A DIAMOKD WITH A FLAW. 107 

they concerned themselves not at all: which yet 
was a far more important question than what any 
of his single acts may have been, and that which in 
the estimate of his character was really at issue. 
We answer, a diamond^ which, if a diamond with 
a fia/w^ as are all but the one " whole and perfect 
chrysolite," would yet outvalue a mountain of jpelh 
hies without ane^ such as they were — even assuming 
the pebbles to be without-; and not merely to seem 
80, because their flaw was an all-pervading one, and 
only not so quickly detected, inasmuch as the con- 
trast was wanting of any clearer material which 
should at once reveal its presence. 



108 THE THEOLOGY OV PB0TEBB3. 



LECTUEE V. 

THE THEOLOGY OF FBOYERBS. 

I HAVE sought, as best I could, to enable yon to 
estimate the ethical worth of proverbs. Their the- 
ology alone remains — the aspects, that is, under 
which they contemplate, not now any more man's 
relations with his fellow-man, but those on which 
in the end all other must depend, his relations with 
God. Between the subject-matter, indeed, of the 
last lecture and of this, it has been nearly impos- 
sible accurately to discern. Much which was there 
might nearly as fitly have been here ; some which 
is here might already have found its place there. 
It is this, however, which I propose more directly 
to consider, namely, what proverbs have to say con- 
cerning the moral government of the world, and, 
more important still, concerning its Governor. How 
does all this present itself to the popular mind and 
conscience, as attested by these ? What, in short, 
is their theology? — for such, good or bad, it is evi- 
dent that abundantly they have. Here, as every- 
where else, their testimony is a mingled one. The 
darkness, the error, the confusion of man's heart, 



TKUTH AND FALSEHOOD. 109 

ont of which he oftentimeB sees distortedly, and 
sometimes sees not at all, have all embodied them- 
selves in his word. Yet still, as it is the very na- 
ture of the false, in its separate manifestations, to 
resolve into nothingness, though only to be suc- 
ceeded by new births in a like kind, while the true 
abides and continues, it has thus come to pass that 
we have generally in those utterances on which the 
stamp of permanence has been set, the nobler voices, 
the truer faith of humanity, in respect of its own 
destinies and of Him by whom those destinies are 
ordered. 

I would not hesitate to say that the great glory 
of proverbs is this their highest aspect, and that 
which makes many of them so full of blessing to 
those who cordially accept them, is the conviction 
of which they are full, that, despite all appearances 
to the contrary, this world is God's world, and not 
the world of the devil, or of those wicked men who 
may be prospering for their hour ; and that in the 
long run it will approve itself to be such: which 
being so, it must be well in the end here with the 
doer of the right, the speaker of the truth ; no blind 
" whirligig of time," but the hand of the living God, 
in due time " bringing round its revenges." It is 
impossible to estimate too highly their bold and 
clear proclamation of this their faith ; for it is, after 
all, the belief of this, or the denial of this, on which 
everything in the life of each one of us turns ; i)n 



110 THE THEOLOGY OV PEOVEEBS. 

this depends whether we shall separate ourselvcB 
from tlie world's falsehood and evil, and do vigor- 
ous battle against them, or acquiesce in and be our- 
selves absorbed by them. 

Listen to proverbs such as these ; surely they are 
penetrated with the conviction that One who, him- 
self being the Truth, will make truth in small and 
in great ,to" triumph at the last, is ruling over all. 
And first, hear a proverb of our own : A lie has no 
legs. It is equally true in its humblest application 
and in its highest ; be the lie the miserable, petty 
falsehood which disturbs a family or a neighborhood 
for a day ; or one of the larger frauds, the falsehoods 
not in word only but in act, to which a longer date 
and a far larger sphere is assigned, which for a time 
seem to fill the world, and to carry everything be- 
fore them. Still the lie, in that it is a lie, always 
carries within it the germs of its own dissolution. 
It is sure to destroy itself at last. Prop it up as 
men may from without, set it on its feet again after 
it has once fallen before the presence of the truth, 
yet, like Dagon, it will only be again to fall, and 
more shamefully and more irretrievably than be- 
fore.* And this the vivacity of the truth, as con- 
trasted with the short-lived character of the lie, is 
well expressed in a Swiss proverb : It takes a good 
mway shovelfuls of earth to hury the truth; for, 

* Perhaps the Spanish form of this proverb is still better : La 
mentira tieoe eortas las piernas ; for the lie does go, though not far. 



TELL THE TRUTH. Ill 

bury it as deep as men may, it will have a resurrec- 
tion notwithstanding. Thej may roll a great stone, 
and seal the sepulchre in which it is laid, and set a 
watch upon it, yet still, like its Lord, it comes forth 
again at its appointed hour. It can not die, being 
of an immortal race ; for, as the Spanish proverb 
nobly declares, The truth is daughter of God.* 

Again, consider this proverb : Tell the truth^ cmd 
shame the devil. It is one which will well repay a 
few thoughtful moments bestowed upon it, and the 
more so, because, even while we instinctively feel 
its truth, the deep moral basis on which it rests may 
yet not reveal itself to us at once. Nay, the saying 
may seem to contradict the actual experience of 
things ; for how often telling the truth — confessing, 
that is, some great fault, taking home to ourselves, 
it may be, some grievous sin — would appear any- 
thing rather than shaming the devil ; shaming in- 
deed ourselves, but rather bringing glory to him 
whose glory, such as it is, is in the sin and shame 
of men. And yet the world is true, and deeply 
true, notwithstandiDg. The element of lies is that 
in which alone he who is " the father of them" lives 
and thrive. So long, then, as a a wrong-doer pre- 
sents to himself, or seeks to present to others, the 
actual facts of his conduct different from what they 
really are, conceals, palliates, denies them — so long, 
in regard of that man, Satan's kingdom stands. But 

* La verdad es hija de Dios. 



112 THB THBOLOGY OF M60VKEBS. 

60 soon as the things concerning himself are seen 
and owned by a man as they indeed exist in God's 
sight, as they are when weighed in the balances of 
the Eternal Eighteoneness ; when once a man has 
brought himself to tell the truth to himself, and 
where need requires, to others, then having done, 
and in so far as he has this, he has deserted the dev- 
il's standard, he belongs to the kingdom of the truth ; 
and as belonging to it may rebuke, and does rebuke 
and put to shame, all makers and lovers of a lie, 
even to the prince of them all "Give glory to 
God," was what Joshua said to Achan, when he 
would lead him to confess his guilt. This is but 
the other and fairer side of the tapestry ; this is but 
shame the devil^ on its more blessed side. 

Once more : the Latin proverb, Th^ voice of the 
people^ the voice of God^* is one which it is well 
worth our while to understand. K it were affirmed 
in this that every outcry of the multitude, supposing 
only it is loud enough and wide enough, ought to 
be accepted as the voice of God, speaking through 
them, no proposition more foolish or more impious 
could well be imagined. But the voice of the peo- 
ple is something very different from this. The 
proverb rests on the assumption that the founda- 
tions of man's being are laid in the truth ; and thus 
that there is no conviction, which is really a convic- 
tion of the universal humanity, but rests on a true 
* Vox popnli, vox Dei 



vox POPULI, VOX DEI. 113 

ground ; no faith, which is indeed the faith of man- 
kind, but has a reality xsorresponding to it. For, 
as Jeremy Taylor has said, " it is not a vain noise, 
when many nations join their f oices in the attesta- 
tion or detestation of an action." The task and dif- 
ficulty, of course, is to find what this faith and what 
these convictions are ; and this can only be done 
by an induction from a sufficient number of facts, 
and in sufficiently different times, to enable us 
to feel confident that we have indeed seized that 
which is the constant quantity of truth in them all, 
and separated this from the inconstant one of false- 
hood and error evermore offering itself in its room ; 
that we have not taken some momentary cry, wrung 
out by interest, by passion, or by pain, for the voice 
of Ood; but claimed this august title for that true 
voice of humanity, which, unless everything be 
false, we have a right to assume an echo of the 
voice of God. 

Thus, to take an example, the natural horror ev- 
erywhere felt in regard of marriages contracted be- 
tween those very near in blood, has been always 
and with right appealed to as a potent argument 
against such. The induction is so large, that is, the 
nations who have agreed in entertaining this horror 
are so many, oftentimes nations disagreeing in al- 
most everything besides ; the times during which 
this instinctive revolt against such unions has been 
felt, extend through such long ages ; that the few 



114 THE THEOLOGT Off PB0V3SBBS. 

exceptioiiB, even where they are of civilized nations 
—as of the Egyptians who married their sisters, or 
of the Persians, among whom marriages more dread- 
ful still were allo\^ed, and with yet better reason 
the exception of any savage tribes in whom the true 
humanity had disappeared — can not be allowed 
any- weight. They can only be regarded as viola- 
tions of the divine order of man's life ; not as evi- 
dences that we have falsely imagined an order 
where there was none. • Here is a true voice of the 
people ; and on the grounds laid down above, we 
have a right to assume this to be a voice of God as 
well. And so, too, with respect to the existence of 
a First Cause, Creator, and Upholder of all things, 
the universal consent and conviction of all people, 
the consensus gentium^ must be considered of itself 
a mighty evidence in its favor ; a testimony which 
God is pleased to render to himself through liis 
creatures. This man or that, this generation or the 
other, might be deceived, but all men and all gen- 
erations could not: the voxpopuli makes itself felt 
as a vox Dei. The existence here and there of an 
atheist no more disturbs our conclusiou that it is of 
the essence of man's nature to believe in a God, 
than do such monstrous births as from time to time 
find place, children wilh two lieads or with no arms, 
shake our assurance that it is the normal condition 
of man to have one head and two arms. 
This last is one of the proverbs which may be 



YOLTAIBE AND THE SOBIFTUBES. US 

said to belong to the Apology for Natural Religion. 
There are others, of which it would not be far- 
fetched to aflirm that they belong to the Apology 
for Revealed. Thus it was very common with Yol- 
taire and other infidels of his time to appeal to the 
present barrenness and desolation of Palestine, in 
proof that it could never have supported the vast 
population which the Scripture everywhere assumes 
or affirms. A proverb in the language of the arch- 
scofflBr himself might, if he had given heed to it, 
have put him on the right track, if he had wished 
to be put upon it, for understanding how this could 
have been : As the man is worth his land is worth* 
Man is Lord of his outward condition to a far greater 
extent than is commonly assumed. Even climate, 
which seems at first sight'so completely out of his 
reach, it is his immensely to modify ; and if Nature 
stamps herself on him, he stamps himself yet more 
powerfully on Nature. It is not a mere figure of 
speech, that of the psalmist : " A fruitful land ma- 
keth He barren for the wickedness of them that 
awell therein" (Ps. cvii. 34:). God makes it barren, 
and ever less capable of nourishing its inhabitants ; 
but he makes it so through the sloth, the indolence, 
the short-sightedness, of those that should have 
dressed and kept it. In the condition of a land may 
be found the echo, the reflection, the transcript, of 
the moral and spiritual condition of those that in- 

* Tant yaut lliomme, tant yaut sa terre. 



116 THB THEOLOGY OF PB0y£BB6< 

habit it : where one is waste, the other will be waste 
also. Under Mohammedan influence, the fairest 
portions of the earth have gone back from a garden 
to a wilderness : but only let that people for whom 
Palestine is yet destined return to it again, and re* 
turn a righteous nation, and in a little while all the 
descriptions of its earlier fertility will be more than 
borne out by its later, and it will easily sust^n itp 
millions again. 

How many proverbs, which can not be affirmed 
to have been originally made for the kingdom of 
heaven, do yet in their highest fulfilment manifestly 
belong to it, so that it seems as of right to claim 
that for its own, even as it claims, or rather reclaims, 
whatever else is good or true in the world, the seeds 
of truth wherever dispersed abroad, as belonging 
rightfully to it. Thus there is that beautiful prov- 
erb, of which Pythagoras is reputed the author : 
The things of friends are in common* Where 
does this find its exhaustive fulfilment, but in the 
communion of saints, their communion not with one 
another merely, though indeed this is a part of it» 
fulfilment, but in their communion with Him who 
is the friend of all good men ? That such a conclu- 
sion lay legitimately in the words, Socrates plainly 
saw ; who argued from it that, since good men were 
the friends of the gods, therefore whatever things 
were the gods', were also theirs ; being,, when he 



IIT 

thus concluded, as near as one who had not the 
highest light of all, could be to that great word of 
of the apostle's, "All things are yours." 

Nor can I otherwise than esteem the ancient prov- 
erb as a very fine one, and one which we may gladly 
claim for our own : Mcmy meet the gods^ hut few 
salute them. How often do the gods (for I will keep 
in the language which this proverb suggests and 
supplies) meet men in the shape of a sorrow which 
might be a purifying one, of a joy which might ele- 
vate their hearts to thankfulness and praise ; in a 
sickness or a recovery, a disappointment or a suc- 
cess ; and yet how few, as it must be sadly owned, 
salute them ; how few recognise their august pres- 
ences in this joy or this sorrow, this blessing added, 
or this blessing taken away ! As this proverb has 
reference to men's failing to see the Divine pres- 
ences, so let me observe, by-the-way, there is a very 
grand French one which expresses the same truth, 
under the image of a failing to hear the Divine 
voices, those voices being drowned by the deafen- 
ing hubbub of the world : The noise is so great^ one 
can not h^ar God thunder.* 

Here is another proverb which the church has 
long since claimed, at least in its import, for her 
own : One ma/n,^ no man.\ I can not, indeed, be- 
lieve that whoever uttered it first, attached to it no 

* Le bruit est ei fort> qu'on n'entend pas Dieu tonner. 
f £i( Mf>, aUiii dvfift. 



118 THE THSOLOOT OF PB0TSBB8. 

deeper meaning than Erasmus gives liim credit for 
— namely, that nothing important can be effected 
by a single man, destitute of the help of his fellows.* 
The word is a far more profound one than this, and 
rests on that great truth upon which the deeper 
thinkers of antiquity laid so much stress — namely, 
that m the idea the state precedes the individual, 
man not being merely accidentally gregarious, but 
essentially social. The solitary man, it would say, 
is a monstrous conception, so utterly maimed and 
crippled must he be ; the condition of solitariness 
involving so entire a suppression of all which be- 
longs to the development of that wherein the true 
idea of humanity resides, of all which differences 
man from the beasts of the field ; and in this sense 
one man is no man; and this, I am sure, the prov- 
erb from the first intended. 

Nor may we stop here. This word is capable of, 
and seems to demand, a still higher application to 
man as a destined member of the kingdom of heav- 
en. But he can only be in training for this when 
he is, and regards himself, as not alone, but the 
member of a family. As one ma/n^ he is no man / 
and the strength and value of what is called church 
teaching is greatly this, that it does realize and rec- 
ognise this fact, that it contemplates and deals with 
the faithful man, not as isolated, but as one of an 

* SeDsus est nihil egregium pnestari posse ab uno homine, omni 
auadlio destituta 



GOOD THINGS ABE HASD. 119 

organic body, with duties which flow as moral ne- 
cessities from his position therein ; rather than by 
himself, and as one whose duties to others are in- 
deed only the. exercise of private graces for his own 
benefit. And all that are called church doctrines, 
when they really understand themselves, have their 
root and their real strength in that great truth which 
this proverb declares, that One mem is no mem/ 
that only in a fellowship and <5ommunion is or can 
any man be aught. 

And then there is another proverb, which Plato 
BO loved to quote against the sophists, the men who 
flattered and corrupted the nobler youth of Athens, 
promising to impa:rt to them easy short cuts to the 
attainment of wisdom, and knowledge, and philos- 
ophy ; without demanding the exercise of any labor 
or self-denial on their parts. But with the proverb, 
Good things are Kard^^ he continually rebuked their 
empty pretensions ; with this he made at least sus^ 
picious their promises; and this proverb, true in 
the sense wherein Plato used it, and that sense was 
earnest and serious enough, yet surely reappears, 
glorified and transfigured, but recognisable still, in 
the Savior's words: '^Tlie kingdom of heaven is 
taken by violence, and the violent take it by force." 

This method of looking in proverbs for a higher 
meaning than any which lies on their surface, or 
which they seem to bear on their fronts — or rather 

* XoXfirft rh <ro>a. 



120 THB THEOLOGY OF PBOVKBB8. 

searching out their highest intention, and claiming 
that as their truest, even though it should not be 
that seen in them by most, or that which lay near- 
est to them at their first generation — is one that 
will lead us in many interesting paths. And it is not 
merely those of heathen antiquity which shall thus 
be persuaded often, and that without any forcing, 
to render up a Christian meaning ; but (as was in- 
deed to be expected) still more often those of a later 
time, even those which the world had seemed to 
claim for its own, shall be found to move in a spir- 
itual sphere as their truest. Let me offer in evi- 
dence of this these four or five, which come to us 
from Italy : He who has love in his hearty has spurs 
in his sides. — Love rides without law. — Love rules 
his kingdom without a sword. — Love hnows nothr 
i^g of labor. — Love is the master of all arts.* 
Take these, even with the necessary drawbacks of 
my English translation, but still more in their ori- 
ginal beauty, and how exquisitely do they set forth, 
in whatever light you regard them, the free crea- 
tive impulses of love, its delight to labor and to 
serve ; how do they glorify the kingdom of love as 
the only kingdom of a free and joyful obedience I 
while yet at the same time, if we would appreciate 
them at all their worth, is it possible to stop short 

* Chi ha r amor nel petto, ha lo sprone a i fianchi. — Amor regge 
eensa legge. (0£ Rom. sdii. 9, 10.) — ^Amor regge il suo regno senza 
spada. — ^Amor non conosce trayaglio. (C£ Gen. xxix. 20, 80.)— Di 
tutte le arti maestro h amore. 



Wm7E8SE8 FOB THE TRUTH. 121 

of the application of them to that kingdom of love, 
which, because it is in the highest sense such, is also 
a kingdom of heaven? And then, what precious 
witness do these utterances contain — the inore pre- 
cious as current among a people nursed in the the- 
ology of Home — against the shameless assertion 
that selfishness is the only motiVe sufficient to pro- 
duce good (?) works ! for in such an assertion the 
Eomish impugners of a free justification constantly 
deal, charging this which we hold, of our justifica- 
tion by faith only, which when translated into the 
language of ethics is. at least as important in the 
province of morality as it is in that of faith, with 
being an immoral doctrine, and not so fruitful in 
deeds of love as one which should connect these 
deeds with a selfish thought of promoting our own 
safety thereby. 

There are proverbs which reach the height of 
evangelical morality. " Little gospels"* the Span- 
iard too boldly indeed calls his ; yet are there cer- 
tainly many which we feel could nowhere have 
arisen or obtained their circulation but under the 
influence of Christian faith, being in spirit, and often 
in form as well as in spirit, the outbirths of it. Thus 
is it with that exquisitely beautiful proverb of our 
own : The way to hea/oen is ly Weejping- Gross ; and 
with another more familiar to us all : No cross^ no 
crown ; nor otherwise with the Spanish : God never 

* Evangelios pequefios. 



122 THE THEOLOGY OF PEOVEEBS. 

wounds with hoth hands /* not with hoih^ for lie ever 
reserves one witli wliicli to bind up and to heal. 
And another Spanish, evidently intended to give 
the sum and substance of all which in life is to bo 
desired the most — Peace and j}atiencey and death 
with penitence^ — gives this snm certainly as it pre- 
sents itself to the Christian eye. And this of ours 
is Christian both in form and in spirit : Every cross 
hath its inscription / the name, that is, inscribed 
npon it, of the person for whom it was shaped. It 
was intended for those shoulders upon which it is 
laid, and will adapt itself to them ; afflictions come 
not at random ; that fearful word is never true which 
a spirit greatly vexed spake in the hour of its im- 
patience : " I have little faith in the paternal love 
which I need ; so ruthless or so negligent seems the 
government of this earth.":|: 

So, too, is it with that ancient German proverb : 
When Ood loathes aught^ men presently loathe it 
too.\ This seems to me such as could only have 
been first uttered by one who had watched long the 
w^ays by which shame and honor travel in this world ; 
and had noted how it ever came to pass that even 



* No hiere Dios con dos mnuos. 

f Paz y paciencia, j muerte con penitencia. 

J Memoirs of Margaret F^ller^ vol. iiL, p. 266. May we not be- 
lieve that our proverb, For mad words deaf ears, is often graciously 
true, even in the very courts of heaven ? 

I Wenn Gott ein Ding verdreufst^ so verdreufst es auch bald die 
Menschen. 



CnSIBTIAN FBOYESBS. 123 

ft ' ■ '■ 

worldly honor tarried not long with them, fiom 
whom the true honor which cometh from God hid 
departed. For the worldly honor is but a shadow 
and reflex that waits upon the heavenly ; it may 
indeed linger for a little, but it will be only for a 
littlej after it is divorced from its substance. Where 
the honor from him has been withdrawn, he causes 
in one way or another the honor from men ere long 
to be withdrawn too. When he loathes, presently 
man loathes also. The saltless salt is not merely 
cast out by him, but is trodden under foot of men. 
(Matt. V. 13.) A Louis the Fifteenth's death-bed is 
nearly as hideous to the natural as to the spiritual 
eye. 

It would be interesting to collect, as with reverence 
one might, variations on scriptural proverbs or say- 
ings, which the proverbs of this world supply ; and 
this, both in those cases where the latter have 
grown out of the former, owing more nearly or 
more remotely their existence to them, and in those 
also where they are independent of them, so far, 
that is, as anything true can be independent of the 
absolute Truth. Some of those which follow evi- 
dently belong to one of these classes, some to the 
other. Thus Solomon has said: "It is better to 
dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a 
brawling woman in a wide house" (Pov. xxi. 9) ; 
and again: "Better a dry morsel and quietness 
therewith, than a house full of sacrifices with strife." 



124 THE THEOLOGY OF PBOTEEBS. 

(Prov. xvii. 1.) With these compare the two prov- 
erbs, Latin and Spanish, adduced below,* The 
Psalmist has said : ^^ As he loved cursing, so let it 
come unto him." (Ps. cix. 17.) The Turks express 
their conviction in this same law of the divine re- 
taliations : Cwraea^ like chickens^ always come home 
to roost; they return, that is, to their owners. Our 
own, ha/rm waiich^ harm ca/tch^ is an utterance of 
the same conviction. Our Lord declares, that with- 
out his Father there falls no single sparrow to the 
ground, that " not one of them is forgotten before 
God." (Luke xii. 6.) The same truth of a provi- 
dentia specialissime (between which and no provi- 
dence at all there is indeed no tenable position), is 
asserted in the Catalan proverb: UTo leaf moves^ 
hut God wills it\ Again, he has said: "No man 
can serve two masters." (Matt. vi. 24.) And so the 
Spanish proverb : He who has to serve two masters^ 
has to lie to one^X Or compare with Matt. xix. 29, 
this remarkable Arabic proverb : Purchase the 
next world with this; so shalt thou win both. 
Again, the Lord has said: "Many be called, but 
few chosen" (Matt. xx. 16) ; many have the outward 
marks of a Christian profession, few the inner sub- 

* Non qnam late eed qui&m Isete** habites, refert — ^Mae vale nn 
pedazo de pan con amor, que gallinas eon dolor. 

f No ae mou la fulla, que Deu no ha vulla. This is one of the 
proverbs of which the peculiar grace and charm nearly disappear in 
the rendering. 

X Quien & doe sefiores ha de servir, al uno ha de mentir. 



PBOTEBBS AND SCBIPTUBB. 125 

stance. The Alexandrian fathers were fond of bring- 
ing into comparison with this a Greek proverb, 
spoken indeed quite independently of it, and long 
previously ; and the parallel certainly is a happy 
one : The thyrsus-iea/rers a/re many^ hut the iua- 
chants few y* many assume the signs and tokens, 
but few have the realities, of inspiration.! 

It has been sometimes a matter of consideration 
to me whether we of the clergy might not make 
larger use, though of course it would be only occa- 
sional, of proverbs in our public teaching than we 
do. Great popular preachers of time past, or seeing 
that this phrase has now so questionable a sound, 
great preachers for the people, such as have found 
their way to the universal heart of their fellows, ad- 
dressing themselves not to that which some men had 
different from others, biit to that rather which each 
had in common with all, these have been ever great 

* UoWot Toi vapdriKOtpSpotj iravpoi 8i rs PaK)^f)i, 

f The fact which this proverb proclaims, of a great gulf existiDg 
between what men profess and what thcj are, is rne too frequently 
repeating itself and thrusting itself on the notice of all, not to haye 
found its utterance in an infinite variety of forms^ although none 
perhaps so deep and poetical as this. Thus there is another Greek 
line, fairly represented by this Latin : — 

Qui tauros stimulent raulti, sed rarus arator; 

and there is the classical Roman proverb : Non omnes qui habent 
citharam, sunt citharoedi ; and the medieval rhyming verse : — 

Non est venator quivis per comua flator; 

and this Eastern word : " Hast thou mounted the pulpit^ thou art not 
therefore a preacher ;'' with many more. 



126 TSB THBOLOGT OF PB0VSBB8. 

emplbyere of proverbs. Thus he who would know 
the riches of the German proverbs, the vigorous 
manifold employment of which they are capable, 
will find no richer mine to dig in than the works of 
Luther. And such employment of them would, I 
believe, with our country congregations be espe- 
cially valuable. Any one, who by after investiga- 
tion has sought to discover how much our rustic 
hearers carry away, even from the sermons to which 
they have attentively listened, will find that it is 
hardly ever the course and tenor of the argu- 
ment, supposing the discourse to have contained 
such ; but, if anything was uttered, as it used so 
often to be by the best puritan preachers, tersely, 
pointedly, epigrammatically, this will have stayed 
by them, while all beside has gone. Now, the terse- 
ness and point which have caused other words to be 
remembered, are exactly what signalize the proverb, 
and generally in a yet higher degree. 

It need scarcely be observed, that proverbs, if 
thus used, will have to be employed with prudence 
and discretion, and with a careful selection ; yet 
still, I am persuaded, it might be done, and with 
profit. Hius, in a discourse warning against sins of 
the tongue, there are many words which we might 
produce of our own to express the mischief it inflicts 
that would be flatter, duller, less likely to be remem- 
bered than the old proverb : The tongue is not steely 
hut it cuts. On God's faithfulness in sustaining, 



PBOYEBBS m SEBMOJETS. 127 

upholding, rewarding liis servants, there are fetbler 
things which we might bring out of our own treaa- 
ure-house, than to remind our hearers of that word : 
He who serves Ood^ serves a good master. Or 
again : lU weeds grow wpace / with how lively an 
image does this set forth to us the rant luxuriant 
up-growth of sinful lusts and desires in the garden 
of an uncared-for, untended heart. I know not 
whether we mighj^ presume suflBcient quickness of 
apprehension on the part of our hearers to venture 
on the following : The horse which draws its halter 
is not quite escaped ; but I can hardly imagine a 
happier illustration of the fact, that so long as any 
remnant of a sinful habit is retained by us, so long 
as we draw this halter, we make but an idle boast 
of our liberty ; we may, by aid of that which we 
still drag with us, be at any moment again entangled 
altogether in the bondage, from which we seemed 
to have entirely escaped.* 

Some of the noblest proverbs in every language, 
and many of them admirably adapted for this appli- 
cation of which I am speaking, are those embody- 
ing men's confidence in God's moral government of 

* I would not exactly recommend such use of a proverb as St 
Bernard makes, who, willing in a sermon on the angels to show 
dk priori the extreme probability of their active and loving ministries 
in the service of men, adduces the Latin proverb, Qui me amat^ amat 
et canem meum, and proceeds to argue thue: We are the dogs under 
Christ's table ; the angels love him, they therefore. love usw {In Fett, 
£L Michael, Serm, I, § 3.) 



138 TSB TBEOLOOT OF PBOVSBBS. 

the -world, his ayenging righteonemess, however 
much there may be in the confuBionfi of the present 
evil time to tempt them to doubt or to deny it. 
Thus, Pv/nishment u lame^ hut it comes, which, if 
not old, yet rests oh an image derived from anti- 
quity, is gpod ; although inferior in every way, in 
energy of expression, as in fullness of sense, to the 
ancient Greek one : The mill of God grinds late^ 
hut grinds to powder ;* for this bjings in the further 
thought, that his judgments, however long they 
tarry, yet when they arrive are crushing ones. 
There is indeed another of our own, which is not 
unworthy to be set beside this, announcing, though 
with quite another image, the same tardy but terri- 
ble arrivals of judgment ; it is this : God comes with 
leaden feet, hut strikes with iron hands. And then, 
how awfully sublime another which has come down 
to us as part of the wisdom of the ancient heathen 
world — I mean the following: The feet of the 
{avenging) deities a/re shod with wool.'f Here a new 
thought is introduced — the noiseless approach and 
advance of these judgments, as noiseless as the 
steps of one whose feet were wrapped in wool — 
the manner in which they overtake secure sinners 
even in the hour of their utmost security. Who 
that has studied the history of the great crimes and 

* 'Oif/l Oe^v dXeovai /liiXot, dXtoviri 61 Xcrra. 

We may compare the Latin : Habet Deus suas horas, et ii\pra8 ; and 
the Spanish: Dios no se queja, mas lo suyo no \o deja. 
f Bii laneos habent pedes. 



CURIOSITY ABOUT EVIL. 129 

criminals of the world, bat will with a shuddering 
awe set his seal to the truth of this proverb ? Indeed, 
meditating on such and on the source from which 
we have derived them, one is sometimes tempted to 
believe that the faith in a Divine retribution which 
is evermore making itself felt in the world, this 
sense of a Kemesis, as men used to call it, was 
stronger in the earlier and better days of heathen- 
dom, than alas ! it is in a sunken Christendom now. 
But to resume. Even those proverbs which have 
assumed a use which seems to unite at once the* 
trivial and the profane, may yet on closer inspection 
be found to be very far from having either triviality 
or profaneness cleaving to them. There is one, for 
instance, often taken lightly enough upon the lips : 
Talk of the devils (md he is sure to appear ; or as 
it used to be : Talk of the devil^ a/ad his imps will 
appear / or as in German it is : Paint the devil on 
the waU^ am^d he will show himself a/non / which 
yet contains truth serious and important enough, if 
we would only give heed to it : it contains, in fact, 
a very solemn warning against a very dangerous 
sin, I mean, curiosity about evil. It has been often 
noticed, and is a very curious psychological fact, 
that there is a tendency in a great crime to repro- 
duce itself, that is, to call forth other crimes of the 
same character: and there is a fearful response 
which the evil we may hear or read about, is in 

danger of finding in our own hearts. This danger, 

6» 



180 THE THEOLOGY CiF PROVERBS. 

then, assuredly makes it true wisdom, and a piece 
of moral prudence on the part of all to whom this 
is permitted, to avoid knowing or learning about the 
evil; especially when neitlier duty nor necessity 
oblige them thereto. It is men's wisdom to talk as 
little about the devil, either with themselves or with 
others, as they can, lest he appear to them. "I 
agree with you," says Niebuhr, very profoundly, in 
one of his letters,* " that it is better not to read 
books in which you make the acquaintance of the 
devil." And certainly there is a remarkable -com- 
mentary on this proverb, so interpreted, in the 
earnest warning given to the children of Israel, that 
they should not so much as inquire how the nations 
which went before them in Canaan, served their 
gods, with what cruelties, with what abominable im- 
purities, lest through this inquiry they should be 
entangled in the same. (Deut. xii. 29, 30.) They 
were not to talk about the devil, lest he should ap- 
pear to them. 

And other proverbs, too, which at first sight may 
seem over-familiar with the name of the great 
enemy of mankind, yet contain lessons which it 
would be an infinite pity to lose ; as this German 
one : Where the devil can not comej he will 8end;\ 
a proverb of very serious import, which excellently 
sets out to us the penetrative character of tempta- 

* Life, vol. i. p. 812. 

f Wo derTeufel nicht hin mag kommen, da send er seinen Boten hin. 



PE0VEBB8 NOT PROFANE. 181 

tions, and the certainty that they will follow and 
find men out in their secretest retreats. It rebukes 
the absurdity of supposing that by any outward 
arrangements, cloistral retirements, flights into tlie 
wilderness, sin can be kept at a distance. So far 
from 'this, temptations will inevitably overleap all 
these outward and merely artificial barriers which 
may be raised up against them ; for our great enemy 
is as formidable emirnis as eomminvs : where he 
can not come^ he will send. There are others of the 
same family, as the following : The deviVs meal is 
half hran; or all hrcm^ as the Italians still more 
boldly proclaim it ;* unrighteous gains are sure to 
disappoint the getter ; the pleasures of sin, even in 
this present time, are largely dashed with its pains. 
And this? He had need of a long spoon thai eala 
with the devil ; men fancy they can cheat the arch- 
cheater, can advance in partnership with him up to 
a certain point, and then, whenever the connection 
becomes too dangerous, break it off at tlieir will ; 
being sure in this to be miserably deceived. Grant- 
ing that these and the like have been often carelessly 
uttered, yet they all rest upon a true moral basis in 
the main. 

I have brought forward, in the course of these 
lectures, no inconsiderable number of proverbs, and 
have sought for the most part to deduce ifrom them 
lessons, which were lessons in common for us alL 

* La farina del diavolo so ne yd in seniola. 



182 THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS. 

There is one, however, which I must not pass over, 
for I feel that it contains an especial lesson for my- 
self, and such as I should do well at this time to lay 
to heart. When the Spaniards would describe a 
tedious writer, one who exhausts the patience of 
his readers, they say of him : Se lea/oes nothing in 
his inkstand. The phrase is a singularly happy one, 
for assuredly there is no such secret of tediousness, 
of wearing out the attention of our readers or our 
hearers, as the attempt to say everything, instead 
of leaving something to be filled up by their intelli- 
gence ; while the merits of a composition are often 
displayed as really in what is passed over as in what 
is set down ; in the just measure of the confidence 
felt in the capacities and powers of those to whom 
it is addressed. I would not willingly cctoe under 
the condemnation of those who thus lecwe nothing 
in their inkstand; and lest I should do so, I will 
bring now this my final lecture to its close, and ask 
you to draw out for yourselves those further lessons 
from proverbs, which I am well assured they are 
abundantly capable of yielding. 



APPENDIX. 



ON THE METRICAL LATIN PROVERBS OF THE MIDDLE 
AGES. (See p. 56.) 

I HAVE not seen anywhere brought together a collection 
of these medieval proverbs cast into the form of a rhyming 
hexameter. Erasmus, though he often illustrates the prov- 
erbs of the ancient world by those of the new, does not 
quote, as far as I am aware, through the whole of his enor- 
mous collection, a single one of these which occupy a mid- 
dle place between the two ; a fact which in its way is 
curiously illustrative of the extent to which the attention 
of the great Humanists at the revival of learning was ex- 
clusively directed to the classical literature of Greece and 
Rome. Yet proverbs in this form exist in considerable num- 
ber ; being of very various degrees of merit, as will be seen 
from the following selection ; in which some are keen and 
piquant enough, while others are of very subordinate value ; 
those which seemed to me utterly valueless — and they 
were not few — I have excludecraltogeiher. The reader 
familiar with proverbs will detect correspondents to very 
many of them, besides such as I may have quoted, in one 
modem language or another, often in many. 



134 APPENDIX. 

Accipe, 8ume, cape, tria sunt gratissima Paps. 

Let me obeenre here, once for all, that the lengthening of the 
final syllable in capi, is not to be set down to the ignorance 
or carelessness of the writer ; but in the theory of the medie- 
val hexameter, the unavoidable stress or pause on the first 
syllable of the third foot was counted sufficient to lengthen 
the shortest syllable in that position. 

Ad secrcta poli curaa extendere noli. 

iEgro sanato, fnistra dices, Numerato. ^ 

Amphora sub veste raro portatur boneste. 

Ante Dei vultum nihil unquam restot inuUum. 

Ante molam primus qui venit, non* molat imus. 

A rule of natural equity: Prior tempore, prior Jure; F%r^ 
come, first serve. 

Arbor naturam dat fnictibus atque figuram. 

Arbor ut ex fructu, sic nequam noscitur actu. 

Ars compensabit quod vis tibi magna negabit. ^ 

Artem natura superat sine vi sine cura. 

Aspera vox, Ite, sed vox est blanda, Venite. 

An allusion to Matt xzv. 84^ 41. 

Cari rixautur, rixantes conciliantur. 

Carius est carum, si prsegustatur amarum. 

Casus dementis correctio fit sapientis. 

Catus saepe satur cum capto mure jocatur. 

Cautus homo cavit, si quem natura notavit. 

Contra vim mortis non herbula crescit in hortis. 

Qui puer assuescit, major dimittere nescit. 

The same appears also in a pentameter, and under an Hor»- 
tian image : Quod nova testa capita inveterata sapit 

Cum jocus est verus, jocus est mains atque severus 

So the Spanish : Malas son las burlas verdaderaa. 



LATIN PBOVBRBS, 185 

Curia Romana non quserit ovem sine lani. 

Dat bene, dat multum, qui dat cum munere* vultum. 

"He that showeth mercy, with cheerfulnesa" (Rom. xiL 8.) 
C£ Ecclus. xzxY. 9 ; Seneqa, De Benef., L 1. 

Deficit ambobus qui vult servire duobus. 

Cf. Matt vi 24. 

Dormit secure, cui non est functio curse. 

Curoe must be here for euritBy aooording to the analogy of our 
own proverb : Far from courtj far from care, 

Ebibe vas totum, si vis cognoscere potum. 
Est facies testis, quales intrinsecus estis. 
Est nulli certum cui pugna velit dare sertum. 

Cf. 1 Kings, X. II : Let not him that girdeth on his harness 
boast himself as he that putteth it oiV* 

Ex lingua stuM veniunt incommoda multa. 
Ex minimo crescit, sed non cito fama quiescit. 
Fcemina ridendo flendo fallitque canendo. 
Frangitur ira gravis, cum fit responsio suavis. 

Cf. Prov. XV. 1 : "A soft answer tnmeth away wrath.** 
Fures in lite pandunt abscondita vitse. 

So in Spanish : Rinen las comadres, y dicense las verdadea 
Furtivus potus planus dulcedine totus. 

Cf Prov. ix. Vl : " Stolen waters are sweet* 

Hoc retine verbum, frangit Deus omne superbum. 

When Ghilon asked M&o^ what God was doing, he replied : 
" He is bringing down the high, and exalting the low ;** an 
answer which Bayle himself has called " nne abr6g6 de I'hiEh 
toire humaine." 



186 APPEin>ix. 

Ilia mihi patria est, ubi pascor, non ubi nascor. 
Impedit omne forum defectus denarioram. 
In vestimentis non stat sapientia mentis. 
In vili veste nemo tractatur boneste. 

The RufisianB haye a worthier proverb : A man*» reeqiiUm ti 
according to hit eoai ; hit dismiBsdl according to hU ttnte, 

Linguam frsenare plus est quam castra domare. 
Lingua susurronis est pejor felle draconis. 
Musca, canes, mimi veniunt ad fercula primi. 
Mus salit in stratum, cum scit non adfore catum. 
Ne credas undam placidam non esse profundam. 
^il cito mutabis, donee meliora parabis. 
Nobilitas morum plus ornat quam genitoram. 
Non colit arva bene, qui semen mandat arense.' 
Non est in mundo dives qui dicit, Abundo. 
Non babet enguillam, per caudam qui tenet illam. 
Non Stat securus, qui protinus est ruiturus. 
Non vult scire satur quid jejunus patiatur 
Omnibus est nomen, sed idem non omnibus omen. 

In a world of absolute truth, every name would be the exact 
utterance of the thing or person that bore it; but in our 
world not every Irenseus is peaceable, nor every Blanche a 
blonde. Vigilantius ought rather, according to Jerome, to 
have been named Dormitantius ; and Antiochus Epiphanes 
(the Illustrious^ was for the Jews Antiochus Epimanes (the 
Insane). 

Parvis imbutus tentabis grandia tutus. 
Pelle sub agnina latitat mens ssepe lupina. 
Per multum, Cras, Cras, omnis consumitur stas. 
Prodigus est natus de parco patre creatus. 
Quando tumet venter, produntur facta latenter. 



LATIN PBOVEBBS. 187 

Qui bene vult fari, debet bene prsemeditari. 
Quidquid agit mundus, monachus vult esse secundus. 
Qui petit alta nimis, retro lapsus ponitur imis. 
Qui pingit fioreih non pingit fioris odorem. 
Qui se non noscat, vicini jurgia poscat. 
Quisquis amat luscam, luscam putat esse venustam. 
Quisquis amat ranam, ranam putat esse Dianam. 
Quod raro cemit oculi Inx, cor cito spernit. 
Quo minime reris, de gnrgite pisce frueris. 
Quos vult sors ditat, et quos vult sub pede tritat. 
Res satis est nota, plus foetent stercora mota. 
Scribatur portis, Meretrix est janua mortis. 

Cf. Prov. vii. 6-2*7. 

Sepes calcatur, qu^ pronior esse putatur. 
Si curiam curas, pariet tibi curia curas. 
Si nequeas plures, vel te solummodo cures. 
Si non morderis, cane quid latranto vereris ? 
Stare diu nescit, quod non aliquando quiescit. 
Subtrahe ligna focis, flammam restinguere si vis. 
Sunt asini multi solum bino pede fulti. 
Sus magis in cceno gaudet quam fonte soreno. 
Tam male nil cusum, quod nullum prosit in usum. 
Ultra posse viri non vult Deus ulla requiri. 
Verba satis celant mores, eademque revelant. 
Vos inopes nostis, quis amicus quisve sit hostis. 

So the Gascon proverb, expressing the other side of the 
truth : Bich6 hom^ non sap qui I7 es amjq. 

Vulpes vult fraudem, lupus agnum, fcemina laudem. 



138 APPSEIBIX. 

Add to these a few of *he same description, but nn* 
rhymed : — 

Catus amat pisceS) sed non vult tingere plantam. 

It is with this proverb^ which is almost of all languages^ that 
Iiadj Macbeth taunts her husband, as one — 
"Letting *I dare not* wait upon *I would,' 
Like the poor cat i' the adage.** — Act L Scene yiL 

Cochlea consiliis, in factis esto volucris. 

Dat Deus omne bonum, sed non per comua taumm. 

The Chinese say ; Even the ripest fruit doe^ not drop into on^s 
mouth; and there is another proverb: Non yolat in buccaa 
assa columba tnaa 

Ense cadunt multi, perimit sed crapula plures. 

The Spanish proyerb sets forth the same truth from another 
point of view : Mas mato la cena que sano Avicena. 

Furfure se miscens porcorum dentibus estur. 

With a slight variation the Italian : Chi si fa fango^ il poroo 
lo calpesta. 

Ipsa dies quandoque parens, quandoque noverca. 
Invidus haud eadem semper quatit ostia Daemon. 
Mirari, non rimari, sapientia vera est. 
Nomina si nescis, perit et cognitio rerum. 

A very deep proverb : the causce vocum and the eauscB rerum 
are often so closely intertwined, that till the first are known, 
the second must remain unknown. 

Non stillant omnes quas cernis in aere nubes. 
Non venit ad silvam, qui cuncta rubeta veretur. 
Pro ratione Dfeus dispertit frigora vestis. 
Quod raruni catum ; vilescit quotidianum. 



LATIN PE0VEEB8. 189 

Sermones blandi non radunt ora loquentis. 
Stultoram calami carbones, mcenia chartae. 

So the Frenoh proverb : Muraille blanche, pnpier des tota 



Add further, a few which occupy two lines : — 

Argue consultum, te diliget ; argue stultum, 
Avertet vultum, nee te dimittet inultum. 

Balnea cornici non prosunt, nee meretrici ; 
Nee meretrix munda, nee comix alba fit und^. 

Dives eram dudum ; fecerunt me tria nudum ; 
Alea, vina, Venus ; tribus his sum factus egenus. 

Quando mulcetur villanus, pejor habetur ; 
Ungentem pungit, pungentem rusticus ungit. 

A proyerb exiBting in almost all modem tongues, and one of 
the multitude in scorn of the "villain," whose number is alone 
sufficient to show that proverbs for the most part are very far 
from having their birth in the lowest regions of society, for 
they reflect much oftener the sentiments, the prejudices, the 
passions of those higher in the social scale. In Torriano's ex- 
cellent collection of Italian proverbs, there are some twenty- 
five of these proverbs of contempt assembled under the one 
head of " villano;" and it would be quite possible by the help 
of these to trace the downward progress of the word step by 
step from its meaning of a serf attached to the villa or farm to 
that darker sense which in most modem languages it has ac- 
quired, to bridge over the gulf between the one meaning and 
the other. And in any German collection in which the same 
convenient and instructive arrangement — ^indeed, the only 
tolerable one, — that of grouping proverbs together according 
to their key words, — finds place, the same number or more of 
a like character will be found under "Bauer.** Latin medie- 
val ones in the same spirit abound ; among others, this detest- 
able one with its curious triple rhyme: Rustica gens est op- 
tima flens, et pessima riden& 



140 AFFKNDXZ. 

Si bene barbatum faceret sua barba beatum, 
Nullus in hoc circo queat esse beatior hirco. 

This is the German proverb : Maohte der Bart heilig; bo wftre 
der Geiaabock heiliger Yater. 

Si qusl sede sedes, et sit tibi commoda sedes, 
IIR sede sede, nee ab ilia sede recede. 

Hoc scio pro certo, quod si cum stercore certo, 
Vinco seu vincor, semper ego maculor. 

Multum deliro, si cuique placere requiro ; 
Omnia qui potuit, hac sine dote fuit. 

Permutant mores homines, cum dantur honores ; 
Corde Stat inflato pauper, honore dato. 



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